India deployed thousands of troops in a northern state on Sunday to quell deadly protests that have severely curtailed water supplies to the capital, New Delhi, this weekend. Around 4,000 troops and 5,000 paramilitaries were deployed in the northern Indian state of Haryana after violent protests by a powerful caste group demanding government benefits killed at least 19 people and injured more than 150 over the past few days. Demonstrators from the traditionally rural Jat caste damaged equipment that brings water from the Munak canal in Harayana state to New Delhi over the weekend, depleting the capital's water supply. New Delhi gets about 60 percent of its water from Haryana. Arvind Kejriwal, Delhi's chief minister, announced Sunday that schools in the capital would be closed Monday due to the water shortage. He also ordered the rationing of water to people's homes. The Jats are a grouping spread across northern India and neighbouring Pakistan. While the Jats have never been in the upper echelons of the subcontinent's complicated social hierarchy, they are considered a powerful caste grouping ineligible for quotas in the state-run educational institutions and the civil services. A year ago, the country's Supreme Court removed the Jats from the list of OBCs (Other Backward Classes) eligible for special quotas. Their bid to be included on the OBC list is symptomatic of the increasingly fierce competition for government jobs and educational openings in India, whose growing population is set to overtake China's within a decade. A number of other castes, including the wealthy and influential Patel caste of traders in the western Indian state of Gujarat, have been demanding special privileges designated for deprived, marginalised communities. Undermining Modi's economic promises The latest unrest threatens to undermine Prime Minister Narendra Modi's promise of better days to come for millions of Indians who elected him in 2014 with the largest majority in three decades. As before, the 65-year-old leader ignored the protests – instead giving a speech Sunday on rural and urban development in the eastern state of Chattisgarh, unveiling a statue to a late Indian guru and praising a 104-year-old woman for backing his campaign for a Clean India. Saturday saw some of the worst rioting and looting, with protesters torching railway stations, staging sit-ins on rail tracks and national highways causing transport disruptions across northern India, as well attempting to set the finance minister's home on fire. There were sporadic violent incidents on Sunday as troops fanned out in the affected region in a massive show of force, and protest leaders met with Home Minister Rajnath Singh Sunday night. In Bahadurgarh, on the road west from Delhi, around 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 in all.
