[Reader-list] Coming to terms with India's missing Muslims(fwd)

[Ravi Sundaram]

4 November 2006
The Hindu

Link: <http://svaradarajan.blogspot.com/>http://svaradarajan.blogspot.com/

Coming to terms with India's missing Muslims

The reality of exclusion and discrimination can 
no longer be denied. But the remedy requires 
political courage on the part of the Manmohan 
Singh Government and wisdom on the part of those 
claiming to speak for Muslims.

Siddharth Varadarajan

WHEN THE Justice Rajinder Sachar committee 
submits its report on the socio-economic status 
of Muslims, the full extent of the community's 
exclusion will be obvious to all. Especially 
those who have made political careers out of the 
canard that Muslims in India enjoy special 
privileges and have been "appeased."

Based on the data leaked so far, it is evident 
there are entry barriers Muslims ­ who account 
for 17 per cent of India's population ­ are 
unable to cross in virtually all walks of life. 
 From the administration and the police to the 
judiciary and the private sector, the invisible 
hands of prejudice, economic and educational 
inequality seem to have frozen the `quota' for 
Muslims at three to five per cent. Thanks to a 
hysterical campaign run by the Bharatiya Janata 
Party and some media houses, the Sachar committee 
was denied data on the presence of Muslims in the 
armed forces. But even there it is apparent that 
the three per cent formula applies.

This gross under-presence of Muslims in virtually 
every sector is presaged by substantial 
inequalities in education. Muslim enrolment and 
retention rates at the primary and secondary 
levels are lower than the national average and 
this further magnifies existing inequalities at 
the college level as well as in the labour 
market. For virtually every socio-economic marker 
of well being, the Muslim is well below the 
national norm ­ not to speak of the level 
commensurate with her or his share of the 
national population ­ and the evidence suggests 
these inequalities are not decreasing over time.

This bleak statistical picture is rendered 
drearier still by new trends visible in many 
cities. Muslims, for example, find it extremely 
difficult to rent and buy property outside of 
"Muslim areas" in some metros. Apart from several 
journalists, I even know of one former Muslim 
Union Minister in Delhi whose Hindu colleagues 
had to intercede to find him a flat. In Mumbai, 
the situation is perhaps worse. Many Muslim 
businessmen have problems accessing credit, 
besides having to run the gamut of uncooperative 
officials who look upon them with suspicion at 
every turn. Even in politics, as Iqbal A. 
Ansari's recent book, Political Representation of 
Muslims in India, 1952-2004, has shown, Muslims 
have consistently been under-represented in the 
Lok Sabha and all State Assemblies since 
Independence except Kerala. Only half as many 
Muslim MPs and MLAs get elected as one might 
expect based on their population share. In the 
absence of our political parties throwing up a 
large enough number of Muslim elected 
representatives, clerics and obscurantists are 
only too willing to step into the breach.

The `war on terrorism' has added a new layer to 
this already intolerable situation as policemen 
across the country give free vent to their 
ignorance and religious prejudice. The tendency 
of law enforcement agencies to target Muslims 
during incidents of communal violence is well 
known. The complicity of the police in the 
Gujarat pogrom of 2002 was reprehensible but not 
so different from what the country witnessed at 
other times in other places. As for legal 
redress, neither government nor judiciary shows 
any sense of urgency. Terrorist crimes such as 
the Mumbai blasts are prosecuted energetically 
and this is a good thing. But no one is able to 
explain what happened to the cases stemming from 
the killing of Muslims in Mumbai in 1992 and 1993 
nor why the Srikrishna Commission recommendations 
against erring policemen remain unimplemented.

The media are a corrective but only to a limited 
extent. If one section has sought to highlight 
the plight of Indian Muslims, another section is 
constantly ready to inflame prejudice by staging 
debates on irrelevant issues, giving undue 
prominence to ridiculous statements by 
unrepresentative `Muslim leaders' or broadcasting 
marital disputes within Muslim families (as one 
channel did last week) as proof of `Muslim backwardness.'

In the U.S., the old journalistic adage was `Jews 
is News'. In India, it seems, anything that shows 
Muslims as ignorant or fanatical helps propel TRP 
ratings, while rational comment is frowned upon 
as unhelpful. A Muslim MP was asked recently to 
take part in a TV debate on whether there should 
be reservation for Muslims. He agreed, but added 
that he would argue against it. The channel's 
reporter then tried convincing him that "surely 
your community needs reservation." When he didn't 
agree, the channel lost interest in putting him 
on air. One studio guest recently advised Muslims 
to shed their `persecution complex' and to not 
forget that theirs were the "hands that built the 
Taj Mahal." Though no one would dare accuse 
Dalits of "doing nothing" to uplift themselves, 
Muslims are blamed for their poverty and poor 
education. They are gratuitously advised to study 
hard, as if the problem of lack of schools, 
delinquent teachers, inadequate books, and 
poverty can be remedied by will power alone.

The reservation trap

It is against the backdrop of this highly 
vitiated atmosphere that the Manmohan Singh 
Government must formulate a response to the 
Sachar committee's findings. The reality of 
systemic inequality cannot be wished away and the 
Government must find the political courage to 
confront this situation head on. So serious are 
the implications of Muslim marginalisation that 
the Congress must open a channel of communication 
with other parties, including the BJP, to evolve 
a consensus on the necessity for urgent corrective measures.

Among the remedial measures to be considered, the 
least helpful in substantive as well as political 
terms will be reservation. Whatever they do, 
Muslim leaders and those who claim to speak in 
favour of Muslims, must avoid the trap that the 
demand for reservation is. Sixty years of 
affirmative action have led to some improvements 
for Dalits and Tribals but it is clear that the 
country and its rulers have used the sop of 
reservation as an excuse to do nothing about the 
persistent, underlying causes of caste-based inequality.

It is now universally recognised that the pursuit 
of "equality of outcomes" and "equality of 
opportunity" must go hand in hand. Even equality 
of opportunity has a formal and a substantive 
aspect. `Formal' equality means ending 
discrimination on the basis of caste, religion or 
gender. `Substantive' equality means overcoming 
the barriers (or benefits) children of equal 
native talent inherit from their parents so that 
none is advantaged or disadvantaged by birth. The 
India state pays lip service to the idea of 
equality of outcomes (through quotas) but 
completely ignores the necessity of crafting 
expenditure policies that can provide equality of 
opportunity. Nowhere is this more glaring than in 
the field of education where the increased 
notional access of Dalits and Tribals to 
university is undercut by high dropout rates and 
underperformance at the school level.

In a 2000 paper, Julian Betts and John Roemer 
model the amount of differential expenditure the 
United States government would have to make to 
provide equality of opportunity to its citizens. 
In a typology where they define four categories 
of males based on whether they are White or Black 
and whether their parents have `High' or `Low' 
education levels, Betts and Roemer conclude that 
the `equality of opportunity' expenditure on 
education must be nine times higher for members 
of the `Low Black' group than the `High Whites'. 
They also found that the `High Black,' `Low 
Black,' and `Low White' groups must all receive 
more than their per capita share of educational 
resources if equality of opportunity were to be guaranteed.

Both in the U.S. and in India today, the actual 
allocation of educational resources is regressive 
in that those who are affluent and socially 
privileged corner a greater share of social 
allocations for education than their relative 
size in the population. In reality, then, 
existing affirmative action ­ or reservation ­ is 
for the privileged and the goal of public policy 
has to be to reverse that by using the target of 
public expenditure. An important finding in Betts 
and Roemer's work is that economic targeting 
alone won't alter the relative distribution of 
income across cohorts. The targeting has to be 
aimed at the discriminated or excluded cohort.

In India, the first task of the government must 
be to guarantee formal equality of opportunity by 
dealing firmly with discrimination in the labour, 
housing and credit markets as well as educational 
system. Without instituting a system of 
reservation ­ which would generate more political 
heat than tangible benefit for Muslims ­ the 
Government must send out a clear and unambiguous 
message that the social cohesiveness and future 
growth prospects of the country require 
government departments and private firms to 
encourage the recruitment of Muslims. But in 
order to generate substantive equality of 
opportunity and uproot inequality and exclusion 
from their roots, the government has to guarantee 
better access to education at every level for 
Muslims, Dalits, Tribals, and OBCs.

All of this is only a first approximation and 
much more will need to be done. What is 
important, however, is that we recognise both the 
reality of Muslim exclusion and the urgent need to do something about it.