I'm from Ahmedabad. Background information: What is happening is not a religious issue or in any way related to the communal riots 15 years ago. From Wikiped

I'm from Ahmedabad. Background information: What is happening is not a religious issue or in any way related to the communal riots 15 years ago. From Wikipedia: In India, the Other Backward Castes (OBC) status invokes affirmative action which provides reserved quotas in education and government jobs. In Gujarat, 27% of seats are reserved for OBC (Other Backward Castes), 7.5% for Scheduled Castes and 15% for Scheduled Tribes for a total of 49.5% of all seats. The Supreme Court has capped the maximum reservation at 50% in their 1992 judgement. What decides if you are OBC, SC, or ST? Your surname, and the community your family belongs to. Note that membership to one of these segments used to strongly correlate once with lower economic status (and therefore opportunities), but in recent years this correlation is significantly weaker. The agitation is a result of the unsustainable caste politics quoted above. 49.5% of people getting in through a quota is absurd. Now I think that elevating downtrodden sections of society (through economic incentives, or even a reasonable quota) is a good thing. but when half of all seats in universities and stable government jobs are tied to a quota, the playing field for the "general category" is significantly shrunk, and people are going to get frustrated. The community that is protesting are the Patels. They are huge in Gujarat; they're all over the strong middle class spectrum, and parts of the upper class. What I mean to say is that they are not even remotely an oppressed downtrodden segment of society. They happen to be an entrepreneurial and dynamic class; if you're in the UK or the US, you probably are aware of Patels because they constitute a huge percentage of Indian immigrants/expats. My point being: Patels asking for reservation is ridiculous. I guess only in India can a community demand to be labelled as "backward". But when the playing field is so small, is it a surprise that everyone now wants their own space carved out? I hope this protest will die, because animosity between such a large segment of society and others can become a source of problems in the future. But I also hope that it will force the government to rethink the crazy huge reservation system. People in Ahmedabad are feeling scared and angry right now. Just outside my parents' home, protestors/vandals lit three buses and a bus terminal on fire yesterday. Then there's the police, here's a video of the them going on a power trip: https://twitter.com/ndtv/status/636808983131525120 https://twitter.com/ndtv/status/636808983131525120 PS: Not all Patels are asking for reservations, there are a number of dissenting factions as well.