A battle lost & won: How the Jat quota stir emboldened the state

A fortnight ago, when the Jat reservation agitation was at its peak in Haryana, 26 Japanese and a Swedish national were caught in a factory in Rohtak. The city was burning, with agitators setting on fire not only commercial establishments but also the house of state industries minister Captain Abhimanyu.

The Haryana government flew the foreigners in choppers to Delhi safely. This one incident had a profound impact on the Haryana government's decision to hold the Global Investors Summit in Gurgaon on March 7-8.

"Some dark clouds began to loom large over this summit. We had just been through 100 difficult hours when seven of our 21 districts witnessed some unfortunate law-and-order events… For a while, I wavered. Should I believe these doubting Thomases? Or should I trust Suzuki chairman and Kenji Hiramatsu, the ambassador of Japan to India?" Haryana Chief Minister Manohar Lal asked a packed house at the inauguration of the two-day summit here on Monday.

The two Japanese had profusely thanked the CM for never having lost sight of the Japanese and Swedish nationals caught in the turmoil. "They were naturally worried till we had safely flown them out in choppers to Delhi in the middle of the curfew," he said. The Japanese ambassador, in his address, was the first to flag the issue when he said safety around industrial parks was important. Later, Kenichi Ayukawa, managing director and chief executive officer, Maruti Suzuki, said, "Like all well-wishers of Haryana, we are disturbed about the incidents."

While the CM took refuge in the sacred texts and analogies to reassure investors, it was left to Amitabh Kant, chief executive officer, NITI Aayog, to forcefully drill the point that the long record of good law and order in the state cannot be impacted by a one-time interruption. But, as the chief minister said, Haryana is the only place where a battleground, Kurukshetra, is considered sacred.