A job for Mr Modi

Narendra Modi’s mindspace of late may have been devoted to playing censor but perhaps it is time he turned his attention to something far more serious: the continuing official and unofficial biases against Muslims in Gujarat. That the divisions run deep, and in a manner almost too subtle to discern, has been underlined by the near-total failure of the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA) scheme to benefit the community. As highlighted by this paper, the scheme — implemented so far in six districts of the state — has come up against traditional anti-Muslim sentiments in the three districts worst affected by the 2002 riots. The NREGA, which covers in its first phase 200 of the country’s poorest districts, is supposed to ensure 100 days of work every year to anyone in need of it.

Not in Gujarat. The problem is an old one: laws and policies framed in Delhi count for little when they come up against entrenched biases — as indeed the strong anti-minority sentiment in rural Gujarat. The Express, in its series, collected copies of the job-card registers from villages in three riot-hit districts and found that where there was political will to monitor progress — read: Muslim members of the panchayat — the scheme was implemented fairly. Where the communal divide has hardened, where violence was widespread, they are nowhere on the rolls. The Muslims have either not been made aware of the scheme, or have been put on hold. The key phrase is ‘political will’: all it requires is an order from Gandhinagar, which has so far not been forthcoming.

There is another aspect to the problem: in many cases, Muslims who fled their homes in the riots to districts not covered by the NREGA find they are not covered by the scheme in either place, and there is no mechanism for their inclusion. With inter-state migration — and displacement, for natural or man-made reasons — an increasing phenomenon, we need serious efforts to safeguard the rights of workers irrespective of geography. While Modi gets his act together in ensuring the NREGA is enforced fairly, the Centre should take note of the loopholes Gujarat has revealed.