#dnaEdit: Move past politics

The report submitted by an eight-member panel evaluating the outcome of Sachar committee recommendations presents the NDA government with a unique opportunity to help address the development deficit in the Muslim community. The Amitabh Kundu-headed panel was set up, rather belatedly, by the UPA government at the fag end of its tenure. The committee’s findings indicate that the UPA government’s interventions, initiated through the creation of a Union ministry of minority affairs and the PM’s 15-point programme, have largely failed. Among its findings, poverty levels among Muslims, in terms of consumption expenditure, was higher than the national average, and only better than Dalits and Adivasis. The committee found that Muslim share in migration to urban areas, especially smaller urban centres, was very low, indicating exclusion and even discrimination. Schemes under the PM’s 15-point programme were handicapped by shortage of funds. And recruitment to government departments, while marginally up since 2006, was far below the Muslim share of population. Though priority sector lending by banks to minorities increased, it was found that other minorities cornered a larger share of this lending compared to Muslims.

Interestingly, the Kundu committee appears to have identified discrimination and exclusion as a cause of this marginalisation. The report’s prescription of a legislation prohibiting discrimination based on disability, sex, caste, religion and a conscious policy of diversity promotion to move away from quotas and quota politics is contentious and will not find favour with either the NDA government or the Opposition. Any move to curtail reservations will be opposed by political parties, who hold it out as a tool to achieve social justice, yet dole out quotas liberally to socially dominant groups like Jats and Marathas too. The BJP is unlikely to be keen on a conscious policy of diversity promotion, either, considering its constant taunt of “minority appeasement” against the Congress. However, the diversity index suggested by the committee, is an alternative that merits attention. Evaluating companies and institutions on their commitment to diversity and calculating their entitlement to government benefits, contracts and tax waivers based on this, appears workable on paper. But without political consensus, norms that are not legally binding like the proposed diversity index are more likely to fail in a social climate of religious prejudices and caste consciousness.

This leaves the option of an anti-discriminatory legislation. Already the fundamental right to equality prohibits discrimination based on religion, caste, gender and birth. However, statutory laws targeting discrimination exist only in limited contexts like the SC/ST Prevention of Atrocities Act protecting Dalits and Adivasis and the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act which offers equal wages to men and women. If enacted, such a legislation will have to create structures to adjudicate and rectify grievances of denial of equal opportunities. In 2008, an expert group submitted a report on the need for an Equal Opportunity Commission to the minority affairs ministry.

However, the expert group viewed this commission in an advisory, advocacy and auditing role, while worrying that taking on grievance redressal would overwhelm it with too many cases. Ultimately, the Kundu panel report is a review of the PM’s 15-point programme. Except for increasing access to education and awarding scholarships, the minorities ministry has failed to effectively coordinate with state governments or other Union ministries on the 15-point programme’s focus on slum development, rural housing, credit support, employment schemes or preventing and controlling communal riots. Even while he touts his “Sabka Saath Sabka Vikas” slogan, PM Narendra Modi must not turn away from targeted outcome-based strategies; otherwise he runs the risk of perpetuating economic and social inequalities.