The Discontent of Hardik Patel

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. 

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)