India has deployed thousands of troops to quell protests that have hit water supplies to Delhi, forced factories to close and killed 10 people.
Rioting and looting in Haryana, north India, by Jats, a rural caste, is symptomatic of increasingly fierce competition for government jobs and education in India, whose growing population is set to overtake China’s within a decade.
The federal government deployed 4,000 troops and 5,000 paramilitaries on Sunday and ordered an end to the protests by the evening. The home minister, Rajnath Singh, met Jat leaders and offered to meet their demands.
In Bahadurgarh, on the road west from Delhi, approximately 2,000 protesters occupied a highway intersection and stopped truck traffic. Shops in the town were closed.
“We are here to die,” said Rajendra Ahlavat, a 59-year-old farmer and protest leader. “We will keep going until the government bows to our pressure. There is no way we will take back our demands.“
TV reports from Jhajjar, further west, showed troops fanning out on the streets against a backdrop of burning and damaged buildings – evidence of the fury of Jats who make up a quarter of Haryana’s population and number more than 80 million people.
The protesters have damaged equipment that brings water from the Munak canal in Haryana state to New Delhi, depleting the capital’s water supply. New Delhi gets about 60% of its water from the neighbouring state.
Arvind Kejriwal, Delhi’s chief minister, announced on Sunday that schools in the capital would be closed on Monday due to the water shortage. He also ordered the rationing of water to people’s homes to ensure that hospitals and emergency services have a sufficient supply.
At least 10 people have been killed in firing on protesters by Indian security forces since the weeklong protests turned violent on Friday, Yashpal Singhal, the state’s top police officer, told reporters on Sunday. Another 150 protesters have been injured in clashes in various parts of Haryana.
Haryana’s police chief said the death toll had risen to 10 and 150 more had been injured. “We are trying to identify the conspirators and take action,”Singal told a televised news conference.
An official from Singh’s nationalist party – which also rules Haryana – said after talks at his residence that it would bring a bill in the state assembly to grant “reservation”, or a guaranteed quota of government jobs, to Jats.
Protesters have attacked the homes of regional ministers, torched railway stations and staged sit-ins on tracks, blocking hundreds of trains. They sabotaged pumping equipment at a water treatment plant that provides most of Delhi’s water.
“No water available now. Still no hope to get it,” said deputy chief minister Manish Sisodia in a tweet on Sunday.
Maruti Suzuki India Ltd, India’s biggest carmaker by sales, suspended operations at its plants in the state after the protests disrupted the supply of some components.
The latest unrest threatens to undermine a promise by the prime minister, Narendra Modi, that there are better days to come for Indians who elected him in 2014 with the largest majority in three decades.
The 65-year-old leader ignored the protests, instead giving a speech on rural and urban development in the eastern state of Chattisgarh where he unveiled a statue to a late Indian guru and praised a 104-year-old woman for backing his campaign for a clean India.
Modi wants to attract foreign investment to back his “Make in India” drive to create 100m manufacturing jobs by 2022. At the current rate India may only create 8m jobs in that period, by one independent estimate.
