A community behind the curve

With resources more scarce than ever, it is vital the government implemented the Sachar Committee's recommendations in earnest

On the Covid quarantine reading list I made —books in the order in which they were to be taken on — was a government report. Published in 2006, it was written by the Prime Minister’s High-Level Committee on the Social, Economic and Educational Status of Muslims in India. Commissioned by Manmohan Singh in March 2005, the report was put out in a year, which must be a record in India where commissions, and especially “high-level” ones, are a sinecure that rarely finish their work and are usually associated with the word “extension”.

This report was put together by seven individuals, all men, of whom four had PhDs. It was chaired by a retired judge, Rajinder Sachar, and the work is commonly known as the Sachar Committee report. It was this report that was behind the famous statement Dr Singh made in November 2006: “We will have to devise innovative plans to ensure that minorities, particularly the Muslim minority, are empowered to share equitably the fruits of development. These must have the first claim on resources”.

This was reported by PTI with the headline “Minorities must have first claim on resources: PM”, and then published and broadcast around the country to great outrage, including from the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, which marked it as an instance of appeasement. The statement is not scandalous except if one is totally unfamiliar with the data and anecdotal evidence on the condition of India’s 200 million minorities or, more precisely, the findings of the high-level committee. 

The report, again unusually for our part of the world, was both commissioned in very brief and direct terms and was written and produced in elegant and simple prose. The terms of reference were for the committee to find out in which parts did Muslims most live, the geographical pattern of their economic activity, their asset base and income levels, their education, their share of employment in the private and public sectors, the proportion of Other Backward Classes (OBCs) among them, and their access to health and other services.

Illustration by Binay Sinha

 

The group looked at the available government data, but also met academics, individuals and groups from the community and non-governmental organisations, including some linked to foreign governments (the report thanks UNICEF, DFID, World Bank, CAPART, Agha Khan Foundation, OXFAM, Care India, Ford Foundation, CSDS, CRY, Indian Social Institute, Action Aid, Pratham, SEWA and UNDP) and multilateral bodies. This was not a report put together casually. Its findings were startling enough for Dr Singh to have said what he did regarding their claim on resources. 

Muslims received 4.7 per cent of priority sector advances, and generally speaking are advanced loans equal to only about a third that the rest receive (here the report admits that its data is based primarily on the figures shown as outstanding). They contributed only 7 per cent of deposits. The report says “some banks have identified a number of Muslim concentration areas as ‘negative geographical zones’ where bank credit and other facilities are not easily provided.”

This is generally speaking the case across sectors. Half of all villages where Muslims are 40 per cent or more of the population are less likely to have access to a pukka road. Such places are also less likely to have educational institutions, medical facilities, post and telegraph offices or a bus stop.

Muslim children in north India are the only ones to have no access to pre-school unless they give up their mother tongue (there being no Anganwadis with Urdu instruction). Though about two million Muslims identify as Scheduled Caste or Schedule Tribe, they have no access to reservations. 

The report says that “Muslims, especially women, have virtually no access to government development schemes. They experience discrimination in getting loans from the Jawahar Rozgar Yojana for below poverty line beneficiaries, in getting loans for housing, in procuring widow pensions etc. Muslims are often not able to avail of the reservation benefits available to OBCs as the officials do not issue the requisite caste certificates.”

Though about as many Muslims proportionally (40 per cent or so) are OBCs, their access to reservations in both education and employment is low. As a rule, this country tends to avoid giving opportunities to Muslims and restricts their representation. Under this government and the Bharatiya Janata Party, this has become institutionalised and is no longer even sought to be hidden. Of the ruling party’s 303 Lok Sabha Members of Parliament, none is a Muslim. 

On many social issues, Muslims are ahead of Hindus. Their sex ratio of 986 is much higher than the national average (Gujarat’s is only 890). Their infant and under-five mortality rates are better than the national average. 

And yet Muslims are so casually stigmatised that the report concluded that “Muslims live with an inferiority complex as every bearded man is considered an ISI agent” (page 14). 

It may surprise readers to know that the Modi government continues to implement the findings of the Sachar Committee report. It continues to report to Parliament on what it has done to alleviate the disparity and the discriminations faced by Muslims in India. The last such status update was given on March 31, 2019. While the update conflates what the government has done under its various umbrella schemes (such as Swachch Bharat and Ujjwala), rather than targeted ones, it still flows from the idea and the acceptance that India’s minorities are more deprived than the rest of us. 

Before the 2014 elections, Narendra Modi said in an interview that when the Sachar Committee came to Gujarat to take input for his report, it asked him: “What did you do for the Muslims?” To this, Mr Modi replied that he did nothing for the Muslims of Gujarat. He will do nothing for the Muslims of Gujarat. He further said that he did not do anything for the Hindus either.

This is a clever answer, as is to be expected from Mr Modi. But it avoids the question and evades the facts as they stand. Given that this government accepts the findings of the Sachar Committee report, it is vital, at this point in time, when resources are even fewer and times even harder than they always are, that its recommendations be implemented and the discrimination and disparity in our society reduced.