Delhi found itself under siege last month. Young men blocked roads and canals that feed people and water into the city. They looted, set fires and dragged women out of cars to rape them. The protesters, from a relatively privileged group of land-owning peasants called Jats, were agitating to be included in India’s list of “other backward classes”, which guarantees university places and government jobs. Faced with dry taps, Narendra Modi’s government was eventually forced to concede to the demand.
This is the fury to which Somini Sengupta refers in the subtitle of her sharply observed study of India’s young...
