America’s New York Times has described the Patels’ agitation in Gujarat as a huge challenege for Prime Minister Narendra Modi adding that it ‘highlight a major problem: India isn’t creating enough good jobs.’
The influential daily’s editorial said that the agitation by Patels’ ‘a relatively prosperous caste in India’ was a ‘Middle Class Revort.’
“This is a big challenge to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who has built his political career on promises to reform and modernize the stalled economy,” it said.
Ir further added, “The fact that 500,000 Patels, who have been a big part of Mr. Modi’s electoral base, attended a rally late last month to press their demands is a rebuke of the prime minister’s economic policies. With half of India’s 1.2 billion people 25 or younger, the need to create more jobs is acute.”
The editorial also said that Patels’ agitation should not have surprised Indians as young Indians, ‘especially those in the middle-class like Patels are frustrated.”
It said, “Before last year’s election, Mr. Modi promised to create jobs by applying policies he had used to spur the Gujarat economy. So far, he has not been able to change many laws at the national level. And the protests in his home state raise serious questions about how successful his policies were for the average resident of Gujarat.”
The US daily added, “Mr Modi now has less than four years before the next national parliamentary election to make good on his campaign pledge. If he doesn’t show results soon, the young electorate that swept him into national office could just as easily vote him out.”
