Class apart

We had argued earlier, when this newspaper8217;s special series on Muslim social indicators began, that the data is a wake-up call for politicians who claim to be championing the community8217;s cause. The flip side of this argument 8212; that pervasive low rankings make mincemeat of the political thesis on Muslim 8216;appeasement8217; 8212; has featured prominently in the extensive discussion the special series has engendered. Taken together, these two arguments are a call for reinventing what has been generally and instructively described as Muslim politics. That reinvention can perhaps be accelerated if politicians can be offered some simple but important policy hints. The first hint is that do not absolutely dismiss economic growth as an agent of social reform. The entrepreneurial spirit that almost defines Gujarat has always had a Muslim dimension. That8217;s surely one reason why the state performs better than most others in terms of proportional Muslim presence in education and employment.

If policy is geared towards increasing Muslim contribution to economic growth, the community can only benefit. Abusaleh Shariff, NCAER economist and member of the Sachar Committee, has done some valuable number crunching on this. Muslims contribute 10 per cent of the labour force but punch under their weight when it comes to contributing to GDP, only six per cent. Upper-caste Hindus, in contrast, contribute 23 per cent of the labour force but as high as 39 per cent of the GDP. Clearly, the India story needs a more varied cast of characters labour and GDP contribution figures for OBCs are 34 per cent and 33 per cent and for SCs/STs, 29 per cent and 13 per cent. Also, the share of Muslims in the labour force of the services sector, the lead economic driver that employs large numbers of educated/technical employees, is just six per cent.

How can this change? The first and most important step is access to reasonable quality education. Has any politician in the Hindi heartland thought of building schools and technical education colleges where poor Muslims live and then see how the people respond? When America seriously confronted the black discrimination issue in the 1960s, the signature social policy was 8216;bussing8217; 8212; taking black children to schools that only wanted whites. How much generalised institutional prejudice contributes to low Muslim presence in relatively high-income professions 8212; the graduate unemployment rate for Muslims is considerably higher than the national average 8212; is hard to quantify. But there8217;s no doubt that the short supply of education is the biggest problem. Change that and the numbers will start changing.