New Delhi: India deployed thousands of troops in a northern state on Sunday to quell protests that have severely hit water supplies to Delhi, a city of more than 20 million people, forced factories to close and killed 10 people.

Rioting and looting in Haryana by the Jats, a rural caste, is symptomatic of increasingly fierce competition for government jobs and educational openings in India, whose growing population is set to overtake China's within a decade.

The federal government has already deployed 4000 troops and 5000 paramilitaries in a massive show of force to restore order. It has ordered an end to the protests by Sunday night, an official in Prime Minister Narendra Modi's office said.

In Bahadurgarh, on the road west from Delhi, around 2000 protesters were occupying a highway intersection and stopping truck traffic. Shops in the town were closed.