After he brought Ahmedabad to a standstill
last week, Hardik Patel was surprised to face a tougher audience in Delhi on
August 30. “This is a new empire. It will take some time to conquer their
hearts,” he told me on Monday morning, trying to sound upbeat. “But we are one
and I will build a national alliance with them.”
For the first time since he burst into
limelight in Gujarat, Hardik seemed unsure. He wanted to take his agitation for
the Patedars community’s inclusion in the Other Backward Classes (OBC) list to
a national level, “uniting all sidelined castes”. But laying bridges between
Jats, Gurjars, Kurmis and Hoodas is already proving difficult. At the meeting with
Gurjars and Kurmis in Delhi on Sunday afternoon, Hardik was interrupted minutes
into his speech. Rajendra Mavi from the All India Gurjar Mahasabha asked how Hardik
could support the Jats’ inclusion in the OBC list when many OBCs have objected
to it in the Supreme Court. Gurjars are in the Rajasthan OBC list, and even counted
as scheduled tribes in other states; it was in their interest to clarify how Hardik’s
“reservation for all” demand would affect them. Did it actually mean reservation
for none?
In Gujarat, among his own – “27 crore
Patedars”, as he likes to say – Hardik could easily swing between conflicting
positions: “I’m not against reservation for OBCs”, followed by “OBCs with 45%
marks steal seats from our smart Patels”. In Delhi, Hardik is a Patel out of
the water, facing warring caste groups, each with their own community history
and political influence. A week after he emerged as a young, brash enigma, Hardik
repeats his catchy quotes, and the media poses tougher questions.
The first scepticism around his ability to
lead a national reservation movement – anti or pro, he is still unclear – stems
from his age. It has been hard to ignore that Hardik is 22, especially when he
so often acts his age. He called his own mentor Lalji Patel “bogus”, and after
one massively successful rally, began to refer to himself as the “hruday
samrat” of Patedars. He appears largely indifferent to facts. He has addressed
more than 160 rallies on the issue, but in an interview with me in Ahmedabad,
he said he didn’t care to know how many castes were in the list. “That doesn’t
matter,” he said. When I asked if he had applied formally to the OBC Commission
for inclusion, he said, “No, all that will take too long.”
Yet, it would be a mistake to ignore Hardik
Patel as a passing headline. He represents the desire of politically
influential communities like the Patedars and Jats to corner more power by
doing away with reservations entirely. Most of all, he represents a real sense
of injustice among some dominant caste youth, stemming from frustrated
aspirations and shifting social hierarchies. He is struggling in Delhi today, and
a lot of his speech is hyperbole, but when Hardik says he is the face of lakhs
of dominant caste youth in the country, he might be uncomfortably close to the
truth.
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| Hardik Patel giving an interview in Ahmedabad on August 29, 2015, as I waited my turn |
Hardik grew up in Chandan Nagri, a lush agrarian
village in Viramgam taluk, two hours from Ahmedabad. 90% of the 700-odd
families here are Patedars. His family cultivates cash crops like groundnut,
sugarcane and tobacco, hiring largely Dalit farm labour.
The family history hugs that of the Patedar
community, 12% of the state population, owning large tracts of prime farm land,
and considered upper caste. (The term Patedar means one who owns land.) When
the community launched massive protests in 1981 against Dalit and tribal reservations,
and then against Gujarat’s OBC quotas in 1985, Hardik’s father Bharatbhai Patel
joined in. The agitations displaced the Congress, inaugurated the rise of the BJP
and consolidated the Patedars’ hold over Gujarat politics.
By the nineties, Bharatbhai started a shop
for submersible pumps. Like him, most agrarian Patedars had by then invested their
surplus farm income in small and medium businesses. They dominated ceramic,
textile, private educational institutions, diamond polishing, real estate and
pharma industries. Migration to East Africa and subsequently to the US and UK,
started to bring in substantial remittances. Nearly every family in Chandan
Nagri has a relative abroad.
Like many Patedars, Bharatbhai invested in his
children’s education. Hardik however admits to being an “average, actually
below average” student, more interested in cricket, passing four subjects in Class
12 only through grace marks. After scraping though his BCom degree in a private
college, he started to run the family business, like many of his friends. Soon,
however, he joined the Sardar Patel Group, which campaigned for Patidar rights.
Having been a campaigner for the BJP earlier, Bharatbhai didn’t object to his
son’s choice. He believes it is from this experience that Hardik “understands
the power of our votes.” The chief minister and 37 of 162 MLAs are all Patedars.
The community can swing the votes of 62 constituencies.
Today, as Hardik demands inclusion in OBC quotas,
he rarely refers to this evolution of the Patedars. “Because it will not
support his claim of backwardness,” says Gaurang Jani, sociologist and member
of the OBC Commission in Gujarat. The predominant images of the Patedar rallies
were of young men arriving in Pajeros, Dusters and Innovas. Jani explains that Patedars
are in every way a dominant caste, beneficiaries of social, political and
economic developments over decades. “If we apply the 11 criteria of
backwardness for OBCs, Patedars will not qualify in even one instance,” says
Jani. “All 146 communities in the Gujarat list applied legally for inclusion.
The Patedars haven’t applied. They don’t really want reservation; they just don’t
want anyone else to get it.”
When Hardik speaks, it is his sister that
he invokes. Monika’s grief about missing a state scholarship is now legendary
in the state. “I got 84% in Class 12 but still didn’t get the government scholarship
for my Bachelor’s. But you know who got it?” asks Monika, her voice rising like
Hardik’s. “My best friend who got 81%. Because she is an OBC.”
On stage, Hardik repeats, “A Patidar
student with 90% marks doesn’t get admission in an MBBS course, while reserved
category students get it with 45% marks.” Rallying young Patels roar in
response, but this claim may be weak. A state medical admissions official says,
“Of 4256 open seat in medical admissions, Patels got 1099 seats, which is nearly
25%. It’s about the same every year.” The cut offs for open seats and those reserved
for socially and economically backward classes only differ by 2 to 3 percentage
points. The reputed BJ Medical College, for instance, requires a minimum of 95%
for open category, and 93.10% for backward class students.
An Ahmedabad-based pharma company founder
called it “nonsense and a shame” for affluent Patels to demand quotas. But some
say that in the past few years, Patidar-dominated businesses have been in crisis.
The diamond industry is in limbo; more than 20,000 small firms have shut down. Thousands
of unemployed Patel stone-cutters and polishers have returned to their villages.
Real estate prices have fallen, and so have farm incomes. “The Vibrant Gujarat ventures
favoured more large conglomerates than local medium enterprises run by Patedars,”
says historian Achyut Yagnik.
Hardik agreed. “What has Gujarat model done
for us? Rich got richer, poor got poorer. I think Modi fooled us, and helped
his friends,” he said. Another young protestor, Varun Patel, said Patedars
might have owned large farmlands earlier, but after division over decades, “men
of this generation have only 2 or 3 bhigas each”. Many sold off their land to
industries, but received no jobs in return. “We are not farmers anymore,
economy is not great for our businesses and factories haven’t created enough
jobs,” said Varun. “So what do I have left? Professions like doctor, engineer.”
Today, as
jobs dry up, businesses falter and the economic pie shrinks, the unrest among
youth like Hardik is simmering.
Sociologist
Vidyut Joshi says that decades of reservation and development processes have created
shifts in Indian society along caste and class lines. “Many upper caste youth are
disgruntled seeing their OBC and SC neighbours get jobs,” says Joshi. “We can scoff
at it as sour grapes, but in the hands of politically and socially powerful
communities, it can have a significant effect.” Poor and well-off youth
experience this differently. Studies have shown that within SC/STs and OBCs
too, the more affluent castes corner benefits – the Dhodia tribe gets more ST
scholarships than Bhils, Vankars more than Mahadalits. “Each caste group is not
homogenous. Poor sections exist even within Patedars and Jats, and rich among
the OBCs,” says Joshi. “Class stratification within castes is a social reality today
– and reservation does not address that.”
Some experts
have understood this leg of the reservation agitations as an attempt to forward
the RSS’s interest in economic reservation, instead of caste. “This is
impossible in India, until caste and social discrimination really ends,” says
the sociologist Gaurang Jani. The system addresses class in some ways; the OBC quota
uses the creamy layer clause, using income levels to weed out prosperous
candidates. But Joshi suggests that class can be considered more robustly, by
including assets, traditional-modern occupations and urban-rural residence
criteria, while not diluting or removing caste criteria. (This was once
proposed by sociologist IP Desai in a dissent note during the Mandal
Commission)
Part-competitiveness, part-entitlement, Hardik’s demands are not just about Gujarat. He represents a churn in agrarian,
land-owning communities especially in industrialising states like Gujarat,
Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh. Through all his confused bombast, he might touch a nerve because he takes
caste pride and this sense of injustice – real and perceived – to dominant
caste youth across the country.
(An edited version of this appears in The Economic Times on September 1, 2015)
