India caste unrest: Jat protesters ease Haryana roads blockade

Protesters in India's Haryana state have partially lifted their blockade of roads after the state government agreed to their demands for jobs quotas.

Twelve people - mostly protestors from the Jat community - have died and scores have been wounded in three days of violent riots.

Water supplies to Delhi have been cut, with water treatment plants damaged and a canal blocked.

Schools in the capital are being kept closed on Monday to conserve supplies.

Protesters want guaranteed jobs under India's caste quota system.

The land-owning Jat community is relatively affluent and has traditionally been seen as upper caste.

But in March 2014 the Congress-led national government said it would re-categorise Jats as Other Backward Castes (OBC), opening the way to government job quotas.

This was quashed by the Supreme Court in 2015. It ruled that Jats should not be entitled to OBC status as they were not a backward community.

Jats argue this ruling put them at a disadvantage. They insist job quotas should be similar to those granted to lower caste people.

After days of violence, the government in Haryana announced on Sunday it would table a bill for the status to be granted at the state assembly.

Meanwhile India's central government says it will set up a top-level committee to look into Jat grievances.

Two more people were killed in continued clashes on Sunday, after 10 deaths on Friday and Saturday.

Protesters went on the rampage despite a curfew and the deployment of the army, which is reported to have opened fire on them in the districts of Rohtak and Jhajjar.

The violence has forced the closure of several key roads and national highways, and paralysed the railway system in north India.

The bus service between India and Pakistan has been affected, too, with passengers left stranded.

Caste system and quotas:

Politician and writer Shashi TharoorIndia's constitution, adopted in 1950, inaugurated the world's oldest and farthest-reaching affirmative action programme, guaranteeing scheduled castes and tribes - the most disadvantaged groups in Hinduism's hierarchy - not only equality of opportunity but guaranteed outcomes, with reserved places in educational institutions, government jobs and even seats in parliament and the state assemblies.

The logic was simple: they were justified as a means of making up for millennia of discrimination based on birth.

In 1989, the government decided to extend their benefits to Other Backward Classes (OBCs) - those hailing from the lower and intermediate castes who were deemed backward because they lacked "upper caste" status.

As more and more people sought fewer available government and university positions, we witnessed the unedifying spectacle of castes fighting with each other to be declared backward.