[Reader-list] Muslims in WB

[A. Mani]

http://pragoti.org/node/4407

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Distortion of ‘statistics’ in the time of Left Bashing
Fri, 2011-05-20 16:27 | Maidul Islam and Subhashini Ali
Muslims_Kolkata_549670f.jpg

A rebuttal of Shri Abusaleh Shariff and Mr. Fazal’s latest offering on
the status of Muslims in West Bengal. An earlier rejoinder had already
been published in The Hindu newspaper, accompanied by the same image.
Image, courtesy, The Hindu


Context of the Debate

Shri Abusaleh Shariff, NCAER Chief Economist and Member-Secretary of
the Sachar Committee, made headlines when he asserted, on the eve of
the Assembly elections in West Bengal, that the condition of Muslims
in West Bengal was worse than that of Muslims in Gujarat.

In response, The Hindu published a rejoinder by the authors.

Shri Abusaleh Shariff, however, has tried to create doubts about the
veracity of their assertions not by the use of facts but through
diatribe and the repeated use of outdated data and incorrect
statistics. Recently a blogpost, known for its vitriolic opposition to
the organised Left has seen fit to carry his latest outburst.

Immediately after the Assembly election results were announced and the
Left Front was defeated in West Bengal, Messrs Shariff and Fazal put
out a ‘response’ to our The Hindu article in a blogspot. It has become
necessary to respond to this so that some controversies can be laid to
rest.

NEUPA Report and Veracity of Data
In our article, we had questioned the fact that Shri Shariff, in his
address to the Indian Objective Institute, had used 2007 calculations
with regard to school enrolment rather than the latest data of 2009-10
from the Central Government-sponsored NEUPA report. Amazingly enough,
Shri Shariff questioned the reliability of the NEUPA report data on
the grounds that it was based on data supplied by State Governments.
We would like to remind Shariff Bhai that the Sachar Report itself was
based on data supplied by various State Governments and that he ended
the report thanking the various Departments of the State Governments.
Questioning the veracity of State Government data is a serious charge
that needs serious substantiation which the authors have not even
failed to provide but have not even bothered to trouble themselves
with.

The only aspersion that they have been able to cast on the data quoted
in our article is a familiar one. They allege that The Hindu article
is ‘a straight lift from the CPI(M)’s election campaign material.’ Of
course this is more than enough to convince red baiters. We are
certainly not disputing that there maybe commonalities in our article
and material published by the CPI(M) – these are sure to occur in
areas like school enrolment based on the same data (the NEUPA). In
fact, all writing using a common data-base will have similarities.

Condition of Muslims: Gujarat vs West Bengal
In their blog, Dr. Shariff and Mr. Fazal have been politically correct
enough to maintain a complete silence on any comparison of the
socio-economic situation of Muslims in Gujarat and West Bengal. In our
The Hindu article, we had demolished Shariff Bhai’s shocking assertion
that the condition of Muslims in Gujarat was better than that of their
counterparts in West Bengal. While in their blog they accept, albeit
in a half-hearted way, that the proportion of Muslim enrolment at the
primary level is higher than their share in the total population, they
are silent on the situation now prevailing in Gujarat which is that
the proportion of Muslim children at the primary, upper-primary and
elementary levels is much lower than the share of Muslims in the state
population. With a Muslim population of 9.1%, only 6.45% of total
primary students in Gujarat are Muslims in 2009-10, while the figures
for upper-primary and elementary are 6.44% and 6.45% respectively.

We would like to re-iterate that the earlier, deliberate comparison of
West Bengal Muslims with those of Gujarat was an example of the worst
kind of political calumny. Does the state-sponsored genocide of
Muslims in Gujarat mean nothing to Shariff Bhai? And does the sense of
security that Muslims in West Bengal share, have no significance at
all? We would also like to remind him of the fact that, under the
earlier Congress rule, Muslims in West Bengal, while being “terrorised
and displaced after the partition”, were getting a raw deal from the
new Congress rulers. They “treated their problems with a callous
indifference and blank disregard” (Chatterji: 2007). Under the
Congress rule, in 1964, West Bengal experienced one of the worst riots
in post-independent India in which the Muslim community came under
massive attacks. A number of reports show that their properties were
plundered and they were forcefully driven away from their localities
which resulted in the escalation of Muslim migration to the then East
Pakistan. (Chatterji: 2007). This trend continued until the
establishment of the Left Front Government whose track record in
ensuring a riot-free Bengal stopped this out-migration.
Madrasah Education
As far as Madrasah education is concerned, Messrs. Shariff and Fazal
have simply ignored the fact that a significant number of West Bengal
madrasahs actually impart modern education for example, the
examinations conducted by the West Bengal Board of Madrasah Education
follow the guidelines of the State and Central Boards for
Secondary/Matric examinations. Similarly, students of Higher Secondary
madrasahs are eligible to sit in the Higher Secondary/Intermediate
examinations conducted by the West Bengal Council of Higher Secondary
Education. These madrasahs are financially aided by the State
Government’s Madrasah Education Department, as far as payment of
salaries to the teaching and non-teaching staff, allocation of
development funds and modernization and updating of curriculum are
concerned. It should be noted that a number of Central Government
Institutes and all-India competitive examinations have grossly
discriminated against these state-funded modern madrasah students by
not recognizing their Class X certificates issued by the West Bengal
Board of Madrasah Education.
On the question of adding more than 20,00 Madrasah teachers and
employees to the total of Muslim State Government employees, Messrs.
Shariff and Fazal have an intriguing response. They say that in its
response to the Sachar Committee questionnaire, the State Government
itself had not included this figure. Surely that begs the question. If
the State Government is responsible for an error of omission that
certainly does not mean that the error cannot be subsequently
remedied. Yeh to vahi baat hui ki chit bhi meri aur pat bhi!
It is unfortunate that Messrs. Shariff and Fazal have chosen to scoff
at the State-aided madrasahs which teach subjects like English,
Vernaculars (Bengali/Urdu), History, Geography, Physical Sciences,
Life Sciences, Mathematics along with a third language option of
Arabaic/Urdu/Persian. Neither have they accounted for the senior
madrasahs which strike a balance between Arabic and Islamic studies
and modern subjects. They have chosen to heap scorn on those madrasahs
which are meant only for religious education which are the norm in
most parts of the country. It should be noted that the character of
West Bengal’s madrasah education is fundamentally different from the
rest of the country and that madrasahs were receiving aid and being
monitored by the autonomus West Bengal Madrasah Service Commission.
The madrasah education system in Bengal is a pioneer in imparting
modern education, unlike most madrasahs in the country that only
imparts religious education. Both high and senior madrasahs in West
Bengal have been getting aid from and being monitored by the state
government sponsored Madrsah Education department for a long time. It
is incredible that Messrs. Shariff and Fazal are small-minded enough
to ascribe the increased spending on madrasahs by the Left Front
Government to ‘vote-bank politics’. Is this not something we should
leave to the Hindutva Brigade to cavil about? As far as the tragic
Rizwanur case that Messrs. Shariff and Fazal refer to in this context,
is concerned, we would like to condemn the studied silence of the
media and various ‘commentators’ with regard to the fact that the
Judge of the fast-track court has questioned the CBI as to why the
name of TMC MLA, Javed Khan, who has been re-elected recently, was
left out of its Chargesheet when both he and Saidur Rahman (a
block-level leader of the TMC) were named in Rizwanur's suicide note?
Muslim OBC Reservation
Messrs. Shariff and Fazal have alleged that the decision of the West
Bengal government to reserve 10% of State Government jobs for Muslim
OBCs, as per the recommendations of Ranganath Mishra Commission, was a
"crass election ploy". The real question that they – and all of us –
should be asking is why is the Central Government refusing to respond,
even before the Supreme Court, to the Mishra Commission
recommendations and why are other State Governments completely
indifferent to this? There is no denying the fact that the Left Front
led West Bengal government is the first state government in the
country to implement the Mishra Commission recommendations. On the
technicalities of the Muslim OBC reservation, it was only after the
official publication of the Ranganath Mishra Commission Report, under
pressure from Left MPs, that the State Government could initiate
procedures like identification of OBC groups, distribution of OBC
certificates among Muslims in 2010 and then notifying the job quota in
Government employment advertisements for appointments. As a result, a
new list of 56 ‘more backward communities’ have been included in the
State OBC list, of which 49 are Muslim communities amounting to 1.72
crores out of a total Muslim population of 2.02 crores or 85% of the
total. As it stands, West Bengal now has 10% reservation for the ‘more
backward communities’ of which the overwhelming majority are Muslims
and 7% reservation for OBC’s, most of whom are non-Muslims. In 2010,
the West Bengal Assembly passed the Bill on job quotas and, in March
2011, the Bill for reservation in higher education for Muslim OBC’s
was passed. These legislations will ensure that the vast majority of
the Muslim community benefits from increased employment and
educational opportunities in the future, irrespective of which party
is in Government.

In conclusion we would like to say that specious reasoning like that
of Messrs. Shariff and Fazal which relegate necessary welfare measures
and policy corrections to the realm of ‘crass electoral ploys’
actually give respectability to those Governments that are not
prepared to do anything to ameliorate the lot of socially and
economically deprived sections of our society.

Muslim Beneficiaries of Land Reforms and Panchayati Raj
Messrs. Shariff and Fazal continue to ignore the comparative situation
of Muslim beneficiaries from land reforms and panchayats under
Congress rule and the Left Front regime. Anyone who is aware of the
land- holding patterns in Bengal, knows that after the Permanent
Settlement of 1793 and the creation of a new zamindari class under
British colonial rule, Bengal Muslims were mostly peasants of whom
very few belonged to the large-land holding classes. Also, the general
land-holding pattern in Bengal across all caste and communities is
relatively small and fragmented. In this respect, the socio-economic
profile of Bengal Muslims was historically different from that of the
North Indian Muslim Ashraf elite who, more often than not, had a
landlord pedigree and also from that of the Southern Muslims, who were
beneficiaries of the colonial policy of ‘special representation’ in
Government jobs and education. The miniscule Muslim middle class in
Bengal mostly migrated to East Pakistan in l947. The three decades of
post-Independence Congress rule in West Bengal saw no attempt to
implement Land Reforms. After the Left Front was elected in 1977, Land
Reforms and Operation Barga greatly benefited the Scheduled Castes,
Scheduled Tribes and the Minorities. While in most parts of India,
landlessness among Muslims has increased after 1947, West Bengal is an
exception. Estimates from the 55th Round of NSSO suggests that, among
rural households in West Bengal, Muslim households constitute 30.9 per
cent which have access to 25.6 per cent of the total cultivated land.
This is second only to Jammu and Kashmir where a much higher
percentage of Muslim citizens have access to 30.3 per cent of
cultivable land in the State.

Similarly, the minorities in West Bengal have a fair representation in
the three tier panchayati system. According to West Bengal Panchayats,
Their Members and Functionaries, 2010, Panchayat and Rural Development
Department, Government of West Bengal,  in the last panchayati
elections of 2008, 23.17% panchayat members belonged to the
minorities. On the 21st December, 2010, the State Government
introduced and passed amendments to the West Bengal Panchayat Act 1973
which ensure 50% reserved seats for women and also a proportional
representation for Muslim OBCs in the panchayats.

The Sachar Committee and subsequent speeches and articles by Shariff
Bhai ignore the important issues of land-holding and Panchayati
representation among Muslims. It is hardly a co-incidence that West
Bengal has an impressive track record on both counts.

MSDP Expenditure, Bank Credit and SHGs
Regarding MSDPs, our article in TheHindu had quoted from primary
sources, i.e. the Minority Affairs Department of the Government of
India sources. MOD data shows that West Bengal has spent 36% of total
funds received until 30th December, 2010 and not 30% as asserted by
Messrs. Shariff and Fazal quoting from a secondary study. This
secondary report also claims, according to them that in the 24
Parganas district, “only 2.2% minority BPL households have been
covered by the self-employment SGSY scheme, and less than 1% of the
households have actually received bank credit.” This certainly is a
cause for worry since this is the very district in which the Trinamool
Congress registered tremendous gains in the last Panchayat elections
of 2008. It is, therefore, answerable for this dismal record.

Regarding bank credit or loans and Self Help Groups (SHGs), we would
recommend the website of West Bengal Minorities Development and
Finance Corporation to get the answers regarding the success story of
West Bengal on these issues.

We would also like to take this opportunity to point out that in a
Central Government report published after the Assembly poll results,
the West Bengal Government has been cited as being No. 2 in the
country in reducing IMR. The report particularly commends the
panchayati raj institutions for having ensured institutional and
non-institutional care for expectant mothers.
Conclusions
It has never been our intention to make grandiose claims as far as the
condition of Muslims in West Bengal is concerned. We have only tried
to demonstrate that the Left Front Government through Land Reforms,
Operation Barga, Three-tier Panchayati Raj, Government support to
Madrasahs and a strong defence of communal peace and harmony had made
some headway in ensuring the security and progress of the Muslims. We
also wanted to show that, after the Sachar Committee Report and the
Ranganath Mishra Commission Reports were made public – and both, we
should add, only as a result of Left pressure – the Left Front
Government made a concerted effort to use their recommendations to
accelerate this process. What is needed to be done by all those
committed to the welfare, development and security of Muslims, is
analysis of what is being done by the Central Government, the real
engine of change in our polity, in this regard. Unfortunately, the
record is dismal and, what is disconcerting is that people like
Messrs. Shariff and Fazal are, for some mysterious reason, completely
silent on this. They are not even incensed by the fact that the recent
Budget actually reduced the outlay on the MSDP by Rs. 100 crores. They
seem to reserve their ire for the acts of omission and commission –
real or imaginary – of the Left Front Government in West Bengal. While
this may or may not succeed in harming the Left, it certainly does
harm the struggle for the development, security and welfare of the
Muslims in India.
References:
Chatterji, Joya (2007), The Spoils of Partition: Bengal and India,
1947-1967. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.


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A. Mani



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