Indian protesters keep up blockade; Delhi water supply restored

SPH Brightcove Video
Thousands of troops are deployed in the northern state of Haryana in a massive show of force to quell protests that have killed 10 people and severely hit water supplies for some of Delhi's 20 million residents.
Women fill water in their containers from a municipal tap in New Delhi, India, on Feb 21, 2016. PHOTO: REUTERS

NEW DELHI (REUTERS) - Rural protesters continued to blockade highways and paralyse a north Indian state on Monday (Feb 22) despite a deal giving them more government jobs, but there was relief for Delhi's 20 million residents as the army retook control of their main water source.

Rioting and looting across Haryana state by the Jat rural caste has killed at least 15 people and threatens to undermine Prime Minister Narendra Modi's promise of better days for Indians who elected him in 2014 with the largest majority in three decades.

Thousands of troops have been deployed to quell protests, which flared again in some towns on Monday. Disruption has been huge, with 850 trains cancelled, 500 factories closed and businesses estimating losses at US$2.9 billion (S$4.1 billion), officials said.

A compromise with the Jats brokered by Mr Modi's home minister on Sunday failed to get protesters to clear roadblocks that are paralysing transport and commerce.

"We will continue the protests. The government thinks we will succumb to their pressure tactics but they are making a big mistake by ignoring us," Mr Ramesh Dalal, convenor of the Jat Arakshan Andolan (Jat Reservation Movement), told Reuters.

"Jats are determined to win the battle. They had to send the army to control our anger but even they have failed."

The Indian army has retaken control of a canal that supplies three-fifths of Delhi's water, the state's chief minister said, raising hope that a water crisis in the metropolis of more than 20 million people can be averted.

Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal said that the army had reopened the sluice gates of the Munak canal to the north of Delhi. Water was expected to reach the metropolis within hours.

- ROADBLOCKS INTACT -

State police said the death toll in the unrest had risen to 15 and that, while order was slowly being restored, there were still tensions in many towns as Jat protesters tried to prevent other communities from reopening their shops.

In Bahadurgarh, to the west of the capital New Delhi, Jat protesters were still out in force, expressing their deep anger over a lack of job prospects for their community, which makes up a quarter of Haryana's population.

Many Jats, who number more than 80 million in total across north India, are farmers whose livelihoods have suffered as families divide farms among their children while two years of drought have harmed their crops.

As a social group they are experiencing downward mobility and missing out on urban job opportunities, explaining their demand for government jobs and student places under affirmative action policies that are typically reserved for deprived groups.

Mr Ramcharan Dekhara, a 52-year-old father of three boys and a daughter, has sold his land to pay for his daughter's marriage and now runs a tea shop near National Highway 10.

"I am fighting for my sons' future. The boys are sitting at home and there is nothing they can do at the tea shop," Mr Dekhara told Reuters.

"They studied hard to make a new life but now they are wasting time and watching TV all day."

The gulf is most striking on the sprawling frontier of Gurgaon, one of Delhi's burgeoning satellite cities, where offices, factories and residential apartments give way suddenly to farmers' fields - many of them tilled by Jats.

The Jats predominantly voted for Modi's Bharatiya Janata Party in the 2014 general election, when he won the biggest parliamentary majority in three decades. Months later the BJP won an outright majority in Haryana for the first time.

Although many of the state's chief ministers have been Jats, the current is not. Commentators have faulted him and other BJP leaders for failing to read the social mood and devoting too much attention to issues like cow protection that are a core part of the party's pro-Hindu agenda.

In a familiar pattern, Modi completely ignored the protests, instead launching a broadside on Sunday against unnamed conspirators he accused of trying to undermine his government.

Playing on his own humble origins as the son of a tea seller, or chaiwallah, Modi said: "Some people are not able to digest my prime ministership. They can't digest that a chaiwallah has become PM. "

They are now hatching conspiracies every day to finish and defame me," he told farmers in a speech in Odisha.

Join ST's Telegram channel and get the latest breaking news delivered to you.