UPA’s stand on Sachar report borders on deception

The Congress government has backtracked on its promises that it will repair the damage done to Muslim aspirations

By Brinda Karat

The UPA government's minority affairs minister A R Antulay placed a report on "Follow-up action on the recommendations of the Sachar committee" before both houses of Parliament in the last week of August. The report is like a pendulum that swings between tokenism and deception. It will be recalled that previous Congress-led governments had ignored the recommendations of successive reports on the conditions of minorities, whether it was the Gopal Singh Committee report in 1983, the National Commission of Minorities report in 1995, or the Planning Commission's sub-group report of 1996. Going by the follow-up report, it is clear that without a strong public campaign the Sachar Committee recommendations will meet the same fate.
In May 2007, another important report from the Ranganathan Mishra Committee was given to the government. That report, which dealt with reservations for Dalits in the Muslim and Christian communities, was not been placed in Parliament at all. It has reportedly recommended, just as the Sachar Report did, that the Constitution should be amended to include Dalit Muslims and Christians in the Scheduled Castes list. The government did not accept the demand of the CPI(M) MPs to table the report and accept the recommendations for reservations for Dalit Muslims and Christians. This approach exposes the deficit of political will in the government to take concrete action on the recommendations of the Sachar and Mishra Committees to address the discrimination faced by Muslims in different spheres.

No time-frame
The follow-up action declared by the minister as "government decision" has 15 points, a rehash of the prime minister's 15-point agenda for minorities declared in June last year. There are only three concrete decisions taken, none of which are timebound. First, it has been accepted in principle that an Equal Opportunity Commission would be set up to look into grievances of the minority community. While such a proposal cannot be faulted, the decision has no time framework, and yet another committee has been formed to decide the mandate and functions of the proposed Commission. The second decision is to set up a National Data Bank and an Autonomous Monitoring Authority. The CPI(M) had demanded the setting up of such an authority, but once again the government has given no time framework. Third, the government has accepted a "Diversity Index". This is supposedly to improve the representation of Muslims in educational institutions, employment and residential areas through a scheme of incentives. Yet another expert committee has been set up to work this out. This proposal, in the absence of justiciable rights, will be of little use except perhaps for propaganda purposes for the ruling party. On all the other major counts, the "follow up action" is nothing but the same litany of hollow promises such as "proposed intervention", "appropriate measures", "efforts will be made," “strategies will be adopted" and so on. The important issue of amendments to the Waqf Act is lost in generalisations; the other issue of recruitment of Urdu-speaking teachers has not found a mention.

Sub-plan for Muslims
In any case, the intentions stated in the report would have some meaning if it was backed by a concrete plan for allocation of resources. The CPI (M) has been demanding allocation of resources through a sub-plan for minority communities on the lines of the existent sub-plans for tribals or scheduled caste communities. The chief minister of West Bengal had made this specific proposal during the regional level consultation on the Approach paper to the Eleventh Plan held in Kolkata on July 17, 2006. Following this, West Bengal became the first state government to include such a sub-plan in its budget in 2007. Additional allocations for the implementation are expected to be announced shortly. In July 2007, the West Bengal Left Front government adopted an Action Plan for Minorities which further elaborated on the different aspects of the sub-plan, mechanisms for monitoring and so on. The government's 15-point programme totally ignores this important demand. Further, the Cabinet in its wisdom has not declared a single paisa in additional allocations for implementation of any of the general assurances given. In the absence of a sub-plan and specific allocations, the 15-point report is Congress-style tokenism at its best.

The first point in the report is "targeted intervention is proposed for improvement of basic amenities and employment opportunities in 90 identified minority concentration districts which are backward in terms of various developmental parameters”. These are districts where Muslims comprise "at least 25 per cent" of the population. It has been calculated that only 30 per cent of the total Muslim population in the country will be covered through this formulation. Conceptually, all such targeted programmes should be done at least from the block level so as to increase the reach of targeted interventions. This is what the West Bengal government has done in its Action Plan. In its 'Intervention Strategy' clause, it is specifically stated "blocks where minorities consist more than 25 per cent of the population have to be identified using readily available data".

A significant omission in the 15-point plan is that of land reform and distribution of homestead land. As is pointed out by Sachar Report, the percentage of landless Muslims in India is high. However, a weakness in the report is that it does not provide an analysis of this landlessness. For example, in West Bengal, where the rural population among Muslims is as high as 83 per cent, a large section of whom were landless, the major issue for the community was that of land. Since 1977 till now, the largest number of minority beneficiaries of any land reform programme in the entire country have been Muslims in West Bengal. The need for land and, in particular, homestead land has once again been recently highlighted by the unprecedented participation of poor Muslim women and men in the bhooporatam (land struggle) in Andhra Pradesh led by the CPI (M) and other organisations. It is indeed shocking that the 15-point programme has no mention whatsoever of government resolve to address this problem. We must demand that the government include the important issue of land reform and distribution of homestead land in its programme for minorities.

The programme is strangely silent on the most important issue of affirmative action for employment. In its Charter for Advancement of Muslim Community, the CPI (M) had stated: "In the important field of employment, it is necessary for OBC Muslims to get an adequate share of the reserved quota for OBCs…A monitoring mechanism can be set up in different states to check the progress on this front." The inclusions of Muslim OBCs in the OBC lists on the basis of their professions have not yet been uniformly done in all the states. According to the estimates of the Minority Commission, a large majority of the community would come under the OBC category. Therefore, the need is to first include OBC Muslims in the state lists and, second, to ensure that they get an adequate share of the reservation quotas for OBCs, to be monitored through a mechanism set up for such a purpose. When the law on 27 per cent reservations for OBCs in institutions of higher education was being discussed in the standing committee, the CPI (M) had argued for these issues. In a positive response representatives of all parties in the committee—with the exception of the BJP—supported the CPI (M) proposal and recommended such a course to the government. The four BJP members recorded their dissent against the use of the word "minority" in the context of OBCs, and against such a mechanism. It is, therefore, surprising and inexplicable that the government did not accept the recommendation of the standing committee and did not include it in the legislation on reservations. It has now carried forward this unfortunate understanding and excluded such a mechanism even in its 15-point report. This is an injustice to the community.

Yet another omission is that of the role of the National Minority Development Finance Corporation. The prime minister’s initial 15-point programme had specifically mentioned the need to "strengthen the National Minority Development Finance Corporation [NMDFC] by providing it greater equity support to enable it to fully achieve its objectives," but it has found no mention in the government's report. Is it omitted because the government's record is dismal? The amount of total credit disbursed by the NMDFC has come down from Rs 130.9 crore in 2004-05 to
Rs 110.2 crore in 2006-07.

No action on loans
The pendulum swings to deception when one looks at the record of two important components of the programme namely, the issue of priority sector loans to minority sections and secondly scholar-ships for Muslim students.

Since a very large section of the community is self-employed, the issue of easy credit at low rates of interest is an essential component of a programme that seeks to enhance the status of the community. On this aspect the 15-point programme actually dilutes the prime minister’s programme announced in June 2006 that 15 per cent loans would be made available for minorities from priority sector lending. The present programme ignores the fact that one year has passed and extends the time frame for 15 per cent loans to minorities by another three years. The role of the finance ministry under the leadership of P Chidambram on this issue is questionable. In December last year, in response to a question in Parliament, it was stated that although the actual amount of money disbursed as loans to minority communities has increased, as a percentage of total priority sector loans, the minority share has decreased from 9.62 per cent in March 2002 to 9.35 per cent in March 2006. Between July and December as many as eight letters were written to the finance minister from the PMO and the minority affairs ministry on the need to implement the assurance of 15 per cent priority sector loans but no such circular was issued. Infact, it was only in January 2007, that the finance minister admitted knowledge of a 15 per cent target for minorities in the priority sector loan programme.

But that is not all. The day before Antulay presented his report to the Rajya Sabha, the Annual report of the RBI 2006-2007 was released on August 30. A relevant section of the report reads: "With a view to according priority to the most needy, a special drive has been initiated by the Regional Offices of the Reserve Bank for 100 per cent financial inclusion in the districts with maximum concentration of SCs, STs and minorities. For this purpose, the Regional Offices have been advised to use a list of 121 minority concentrated districts forwarded by the ministry of finance, government of India together with Census/other data on SCs/STs and minorities. The Reserve Bank has so far identified eight such districts (four in Maharashtra, three in Tamilnadu and one in Haryana) for 100 per cent financial inclusion."

The minority affairs minister's statement mentions 90 priority districts, the finance ministry has identified 121 minority concentrated districts, and when the actual implementation of the commitment is taken, it is slashed to just eight districts. Further, shockingly, there is absolutely no mention in the RBI Annual Report about a separate target of priority sector lending for minorities. Is this not deception?

Conflicting statements
On the education front, the Sachar Report has pointed out the crucial role that access to education must play in advancing the status of minority communities. Instead of mandating the coverage of all school-deficit Muslim areas with schools and ITI's in the next two years, the Cabinet proposes yet another panel to go into the issue. Moreover, the issue of scholarships is also shocking. In 2006-2007, the finance minister had announced in his budget speech that the government would finance 20,000 merit-cum-means-based scholarships for higher studies for minority community students. On May 14, 2007—more than a year later—a question was raised in Parliament as to how many of these scholarships had actually been given. The answer was: not a single one. It was further stated that Rs 54 crore was made available for such scholarships this year. Even now, there is no concrete information as to how many scholarships have actually been given and what the amount is. A clarification from the government becomes essential in the context of the conflicting statements of the two ministers otherwise it can be assumed that just as on the issue of priority sector loans, so also on the issue of scholarships, the finance minister has misled the House and the nation.

Demands of Muslim women
The Sachar committee had been unfair to Muslim women by not giving any emphasis on their special requirements such as promotion of self-help groups, access to easy credit, training, etc. For example, a large section of Muslim women are in the beedi industry, yet they have had little or no access to the welfare measures mandated by law. Special mechanisms are required to ensure that they can access their rights. The government has not rectified this injustice. Except on the issue of the need for girls and women's hostels, there is no specific mention of Muslim's women's role as workers and artisans and the need for special schemes for them.

Security guarantees
The most glaring omission in the government report is the crucial issue of Muslim security even though this aspect had formed a most important part of the Sachar recommendations. It hardly needs to be stated that the growth of the most rabid communal politics has indeed created a deep sense of insecurity among Muslims. This has been greatly intensified by the open bias shown on many occasions by the agencies mandated to uphold the law. A most telling example has been revealed in a paper used to train IAS officers quoted in an article in Frontline magazine. In a
calculation of specific cases of riots, it is shown that for every Hindu killed in a riot in a particular year, 64 Muslims were arrested. For every Muslim killed, 20 Hindus were arrested. Thus, the worth of every Hindu life compared to a Muslim life in terms of arrests of those considered guilty was three times more.

The government has not spelt out any steps it plans to take to ensure justice to the community. Even now, in spite of the nationwide demand for action on the Srikrishna Report on the Bombay riots that named the political leaders and police officials who had led and connived in the killing of more than 800 Muslims, the Maharashtra government has taken no action. The Central government did not accept the demand for a CBI inquiry into the major cases of killings in Gujarat. What use is the 15-point report when it does not commit to a policy that the guilty in communal violence against minorities will be punished? Is this not a policy of an appeasement of communal criminals? The BJP, on its part, prevented a discussion on Sachar in Parliament.