Still missing

Within six months of coming to power in 2004,UPA 1 set up the Sachar committee to study how Indias 150 million Muslims were placed socially and economically,and what they needed. The committees report was a welcome shift from rhetoric to data. By revealing the material deprivation and institutional bias Muslims still face,it took the bottom out of talk about appeasement,and also showed up purportedly secular dispensations. But implementation of the report has been vision-impaired. Instead of viewing the matter as a national problem of asymmetric development,it was given to the ministry of minority affairs to handle,which made it harder to mainstream interventions. Smaller suggestions in the Sachar report like the Equal Opportunities Commission were enacted,its mandate narrowed to religious minorities alone. Matters of Urdu language promotion and madrasa learning found their way into party manifestos,even as the more pressing problem of unemployability remained unaddressed. Matters of education and employment,security and political participation are largely in the domain of the states,but there does not seem to be a proactive effort to address the gaps.

Data from the National Crime Records Bureau shows how,in nearly all the states,the proportion of Muslims in the police force is far lower than their share in the population. In 2007,there were 1.01 lakh Muslims in the countrys police 7.55 per cent of what was then a 13.4 lakh strong force. By 2012,the force had grown over 24 per cent to 16.7 lakh,but Muslim representation had actually fallen by one percentage point to 6.5 per cent. This has a bearing on the institutional hostility experienced by Muslims,their fear of arbitrary arrests and biased investigations. In cases of communal tension or terror,police attention is overwhelmingly directed at Muslims,including in states that have supposedly minority-friendly governments. These are questions that the Centre,state governments and political parties should frontally face,before making grand claims about inclusion and attention to minorities.

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