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The Justice Rajinder Sachar panel report has etched to broad relief the socio-economic and educational backwardness of the Muslims in India. The document, coming as it does after nearly a quarter century after the Gopal Singh report presented in 1983, comprehensively assesses the situation of India’s largest minority which constitutes 13 per cent of the population. But going by the sheer immensity of numbers in India, it highlights the lot of nearly 10 per cent of the world’s Muslims.
Though the Panel has left the task of devising ameliorative measures with the Government of India, the report calls for enhancing the share of Muslims in employment, offering better educational facilities, bringing their habitations under civic care and improving law and order situation in order to address their security concerns. Its negative connotations cannot be mistaken. The national desire to treat all citizens equally and accord equal opportunities to all still remains a distant dream. Bias and discrimination operate against sections desirous of retaining their religio-linguistic-ethnic identity and alienate them from benefit-delivery mechanism. Despite loud profession of commitment to secularism, the State still practises the majoritarian agenda. Notwithstanding the known victimization of minorities at the hands of the communal, fascist and chauvinist forces, it is the very same minorities who suffer from the punitive action, harassment at the hands of the law and order authorities and general suspicion in the eyes of the mainstream masses. These broad features show varying degree of regional presence and incidence.
It is evident from the facts collected by the Panel that the Muslims are not able to access the benefits from poverty alleviation schemes. With 94.4 per cent below the poverty-line, Muslims remaining deprived of the food grains distributed under the official schemes, only 3.2 per cent getting subsidized loans or only 1.9 per cent benefiting from Antyodaya or Anna Yojana schemes, clearly the schemes bypass the community. Sixty two per cent Muslims do not own land in the rural areas against 43 per cent national average in this context. This being an important indicator of economic status in rural areas, the lot of the rural Muslims could be guessed. Only 2.1 per cent Muslim farmers have tractors and only one per cent having hand pumps, further substantiate the position.
On the educational front, the picture is equally dismal: 54.6 per cent Muslims in villages and 60 per cent in urban areas have never attended schools against the national average of 40.8 per cent in rural areas and 19.9 per cent in urban areas. Although in urban areas nearly 40 per cent of the Muslims now receive modern education, only 3.1 per cent of the community in urban areas are graduates. Just 1.2 per cent are post-graduates. Only 0.8 per cent of Muslims in rural areas are graduates.
Low educational attainments not only result in low awareness of economic opportunities, but also reduce the capacity to compete for them in a resource-short country like ours where talent is abundant. Ghettoised habitational pattern in most of the north Indian states tends to lower the economic worth of landed assets of Muslims thereby depriving them of facilities such as bank loans, credit cards, and results in inclusion of the areas among defaulters zone. It simultaneously raises the index on the law and order sensitivity. No wonder then that the Panel report has found more Muslims among under-trials and convicts in jails across the states.
Some of the aspects revealed by the Panel are shocking to say the least. This includes the statistics pertaining to West Bengal where Muslims constitute a little over quarter of the state’s population, but their representation in the Government jobs is abysmal i.e., 4.2 per cent. In Assam with 31 per cent of population, their representation is just one-third of what they deserve. Even in populous states such as Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, their numbers leave much to be desired. Facts get a touch of poignancy because most of these states were under almost no or only brief duration of rule by openly hostile parties like the Bharatiya Janata Party. In fact, the major champions of secularism that have strode over the national political scene have emerged from the region.
Jail statistics from Gujarat, Delhi and Maharashtra should leave dumbfounding impact. Muslims held under trial or convicted, number almost three fold than their population would suggest.
While detailed report would be awaited for a thread bare discussion, it would be appropriate for the community to assess its position introspectively. Some of the issues like whether Muslims should be taught through Urdu medium (not to be confused with Urdu as a language), resist a more thorough analysis of the provision of Muslim Personal Law, allow their charities to be wasted in innumerable theological schools that produce only misfits, refusal to reconsider the position of community women, inability to look at wasteful ritualistic practices, should be accorded high priority by the community. Under development or under-representation are more the result of in-built deficiencies than external impediments. Muslims would need all the sobriety, sagacity and perspicacity at their command to chart out plans for their development.
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