Hardik Patel, the 21-Year-Old Who Has Taken Gujarat Politics by Storm

Ahmedabad: Hardik Patel, 21, does not look like a copybook neta. For one, he favours a shirt and jeans to the ubiquitous kurta pyjama of Gujarat politics. But Hardik is making his presence felt as the face of an agitation that has rocked the Anandiben Patel government in the state.

For the last 42 days, the influential Patel community has hit the streets demanding reservation in government jobs and in admissions to schools and colleges. Leaders of the agitation like Hardik Patel say they are affiliated to no political party, though Mr Patel's father is a member of the ruling BJP.

A video on YouTube shows Hardik posing with weapons - a rifle, a sword, a pistol - and making speeches, leading marches. A prominent banner on the video says "Jai Sardar", a seeming reference to Gujarat icon Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel.
 "The weapons are not meant for any illegal activity. They have been used as a symbolic gesture. It is meant to protect my community from oppression," explains Hardik, who launched the Patidar Anamat Sangathan as a college movement to protect the interests of the Patel community when he was a 17-year-old student of commerce in an Ahmedabad college.

As the college movement now segues into the larger Patel agitation, Hardik warns that the BJP cannot take the support of the Patels - seen as a strong votebank of the party - for granted anymore. "The

Patels were at the forefront when the Congress was uprooted and if justice continues to elude us, we will do the same to the lotus (BJP) in 2017," he says.

At rallies, Hardik Patel draws big crowds and says "youth power" has given life to the Patel movement. The next big rally is planned in Ahmedabad on Tuesday.

With civic body elections scheduled next month, a worried BJP government is making a desperate bid to defuse the crisis, but talks with the Patel leaders have not led to much as yet.