Off and on throughout India’s history, the country’s caste-system has provoked violence over rights and opportunities.
But this time, the caste feeling aggrieved isn’t one of the disadvantaged, but rather the relatively prosperous Jat community — and it wants to be treated like those traditionally underprivileged.
The demonstrators are angry at what they see as reverse discrimination. In protests over the weekend in the north Indian state of Haryana, they blocked highways, attacked railway stations, set fire to buildings and looted, police said.
At least 10 people have been killed. The unrest prompted the government to deploy thousands of troops with shoot-on-sight orders.
And officials are now dealing with another challenge, one that could become a major headache in the coming days. They say the protesters have disrupted a key water station supplying a large part of neighboring Delhi, a city of 25 million people.
Here is what led to the protests:
The caste system
For centuries, India’s complex caste system has dictated a Hindu’s lot in life, elevating some to positions as priests and labeling others as “untouchables.”
But caste discrimination was legally abolished in India’s 1949 constitution and the state later introduced a national quota system of government jobs and university system as a kind of affirmative action for former lower castes.
By 1990, the quota had risen to about 49%.
Haryana’s Jats — a rural but relatively well-off caste group — are demanding the same reservations in government employment as extended to economically backward lower castes.
Jats constitute at least a quarter of Haryana’s population and see the quotas as reverse discrimination, denying them access to a large number of jobs.
Their demands have only gotten louder in recent months as job prospects dimmed. In the past few days, protesters have blocked highways and train tracks.
And over the weekend, they reportedly cut water supply at a station that serves Delhi.
A water supply line
The state government of Delhi has sounded an alert over water supplies and announced schools in the city will remain shut Monday.
Authorities in Haryana say engineers guarded by security forces are on the job to repair the damaged water station. But Delhi’s chief minister Arvind Kejriwal told reporters that the supplies would take at least 24 hours to normalize after the damaged canal is repaired.
Residents and small businesses in Delhi’s northern district told CNN on Sunday that they had no piped-water supply since Saturday.
They said they are instead are relying on groundwater withdrawn by submersible electric pumps, common in Delhi, or are buying packaged drinking-water jars.
“The taps are running dry here. We have to lug water buckets from our homes or buy packaged water for our shops,” said Ashok Kumar, a dairy worker in North Delhi, some 20 km from the border with Haryana state.
He also complained of illegal trading of packaged water because of the current shortage of supplies from state utilities.
Daily supplies in some other parts of Delhi were on Sunday cut further short to 30 minutes from the usual two hours.
A historic grievance
Jat leaders Monday appealed to the protestors to call off their stir after the BJP, which governs the state of Haryana, appointed a committee to look into their demands.
“We are telling them (the protesters) to call off their agitation. Let’s see how they respond as they are spread across Haryana,” Jat leader Hawa Singh Sangwan told CNN.
“At the same time, we want the state government to order immediate employment and financial compensation to the next of kin of those who died in these protests,” he said.
Haryana’s government was expected to introduce a bill recommending job reservations for the Jats in the state assembly when it sits next, the BJP said.
It is not the first time anger over the caste quota system has boiled over in India.
Last year, violent protests broke out in Gujarat, where a community known as the Patels were agitating for the government’s system of caste quotas to end.
Like the Jats, the Patels are a relatively wealthy community angry at the affirmative action.
At least eight people died in the clashes.