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The Vimal Thorat Committee has recommended a plan outlay of Rs 5,460 crores for the educational upliftment of the Muslims.
After the Sachar Committee report, a sub-committee of the Planning Commission has now recommended a total plan outlay of Rs 5,460 crores for the educational upliftment of the Muslim community.
The all-important question must now pertain to how sincerely and resolutely the UPA government pursues the new agenda it has laid out.
The Committee headed by academician, Vimal Thorat has also presented a detailed plan for the inclusion of the outlay in the 11th Five Year Plan, to bring the ‘marginalised section’ into the ‘national mainstream.’ The Committee had one of the mandates to suggest new programmes and schemes for the 11th Five-Year Plan for the educational upliftment of the community. The other mandates of the committee were to examine the status of Muslims in terms of literacy rate, enrollment in schools and the role of schemes during the last two five year plan periods and their impact.
The Committee has suggested a 11-point Muslim community-oriented programme for the 11th plan. The recommendations are expected to cost the government around Rs 5,460 crores for the next five years, if accepted.
The major suggestions include allotment of around Rs 2,500 crores under the District Elementary Education Progra-mme (DEEP) for setting up schools in Muslim-dominated localities. It also recommends giving scholarships costing 2000 crores, building of hostels and study centres (Rs 450 crores) and a National Urdu Book Trust (Rs 200 crores).
The Committee has recommended that the community be armed with specific vocational training, so that the uneducated grown-ups and drop-outs are benefited. The plan outlay for this has been calculated at around Rs 220 crores.
Apart from this, the Committee has suggested a creche be opened for young married girls who wish to continue their studies, at a cost of Rs 20 crores. Special teachers for the community can also be trained by spending Rs 20 crores.
It has said that special attention should be given to the modernisation of madrasas and mid-day meal programme in the Muslim-dominated localities. The Committee has suggested that ‘grants-in-aid’ be provided to the schools providing education to Muslim students, for which a sum of Rs 50 crores needed to be kept aside in the 11th Plan.
The Committee had a total of five sittings in its five-month tenure and also travelled to various parts of the country for having first-hand perception about the educational status of the Muslims in the country.
Based on the recommen-dations, a concept paper has already been prepared by the Planning Commission. The five-member committee also included Sachidanand Sinha, Syed Jamal Ali, Janaki Rajan and Farhan Naqvi. The all-important question must now pertain to how sincerely and resolutely the UPA government pursues the new agenda it has laid out. Should the Sachar and Vimal Thorat Committee findings be allowed to go to cold storage and amount merely to a clever ploy, the consequences for the secular and democratic future of India will not, but be cataclysmic.
Indeed, the state may not get another opportunity in the matter. If, on the other hand, the UPA follows up resolutely, without communal/electoral calculation, on the implications that flow from the Sachar Report, it may truly inaugurate transforming politics that bears the promise of putting secular democracy on a firm and concrete footing and, all importantly, of defeating the project of communalists, to push Indian Muslims into the corner.
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