Myths of appeasement

So, go out into the wide world for the pickings and grab the opportunities. This is easier said than done. For one, whereas funds are available in plentiful, there is inadequate data on the beneficiaries of various schemes. The NMDFC, for example, claims to have disbursed credit worth Rs 114.70 lakh, but nobody knows whether the funding has been extended fairly and judiciously. It would appear that government agencies are keen to dole out monies and not monitor the impact of various development measures on the minorities and suggest remedial measures.

It is true that state governments are guilty of routinely furnishing insufficient information; one awaits the outcome of the multi-sectoral development plan that was launched in 1995-96. Equally, the reports of the National Commission for Minorities, a statutory body, are hardly ever tabled in Parliament. Surely, this is not good enough if we were earnest about affirmative action’, i.e., reducing the imbalances or inequities that exist in the distribution of the nation’s resources. Surely, a government seeking to empower the minorities as the agents of socio-economic change and development must not abdicate its responsibility of undertaking surveys and preparing status reports. Indeed, now that the 10th five year Plan is being discussed, my plea to the government is to initiate, with the help of academic institutions and NGOs, extensive surveys and field reports on the social and economic profile of the minorities. The vice-chairman of the Planning Commission needs to be reminded that such an exercise waslast undertaken in 1983 by Gopal Singh. That is when the then Prime Minister, Indira Gandhi, had stated: “The India of our dreams can survive only if Muslims and other minorities can live in absolute safety and confidence.”

The results are for everybody to see. Let me remind you that Gopal Singh found a large majority of Muslims living in rural areas. More than half of the Muslim urban population, approximately 35 million out of nearly 76 million, lived below the poverty line. The rest were self-employed. Fewer urban Muslims worked for a regular wage than members of other religious groups. The report pointedly referred to a rather alarming percentage of the poorer sections among the Muslims in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar.

The report also furnished information on widespread illiteracy and a higher drop-out rate at the elementary stage of education. The average literacy rate among Muslims was 47 per cent, less than half the national average of 52.11 per cent. Muslim women — more than half the total Muslim population — did not receive even school education, let alone higher education. If you turn to the report for limited Muslim access to government-sponsored welfare projects and to the small share in private public employment, you may well begin to question the representation of a privileged Muslim community that was woven around a palpably false theory of Muslim appeasement.

My engagement is not with the causes of Muslim backwardness, for explanations range from the general to the specific. The fundamental issue is to ask if the picture is any different now. It may not be appropriate to describe the Muslim communities as “the hewers of wood and drawers of water”, but the harsh reality is that there is not much to write home about their progress since 1983. It is true that regional variations exist, especially where Muslims, along with Christians, enjoy benefits in the shape of liberal institutions and scholarships, or in Bihar where job opportunities have increased after Urdu earned its rightful status.

In general, however, widespread illiteracy, low income, irregular employment and high incidence of poverty point to a low level of human development. The literacy level is on an average 10 per cent less than the national level: in states like Bihar it is as high as 98.1 per cent in rural areas compared to21.8 per cent in Kerala. In J&K, the percentages of illiteracy among Muslims in rural and urban areas are 86.9 per cent and 43.2 per cent respectively. The ninth Plan document itself concedes that the Muslims, their women and girls included, remain educationally backward and their traditional institutions like madarsas’ are yet to adopt the modern syllabus to get integrated into the mainstream education.

In 1983, the Muslims were not only grossly under-represented in public services, but were predominant in the self-employed’ category. The report of the subgroup on minorities (1996) constituted by the Planning Commission illustrates that there are no signs of any significant improvement. Whether it is the police or the railways, the state or the all-India services, the representation of Muslims is very low. Relatively fewer urban Muslims work for a regular wage or salary, and their representation in the casual labour category’ is higher than of other communities. Abusaleh Shariff’s seminal study reveals that, in urban India, 53.4 per cent of Muslims are self-employed as against the figure of 36 per cent amongst Hindus. In rural areas, the annual household income for Muslims as a social group is below the all-India average, as well as below that of the Christians.

We will continue to debate why this is so. The more important issue at hand is to review the existing approaches and strategies, to identify those areas for minority uplift that require immediate attention and to devise mechanisms that would lead to the implementation of government schemes. For the time being, one can draw comfort from an official document that refers to “a more pro-active state intervention for empowering the minorities.”