Sachar Report in the Dumps

Yoginder Sikand

Released amidst much fanfare several months ago, the much-awaited report of the Sachar Committee appointed by the Government of India to investigate various dimensions of Muslim marginalization in India now threatens to meet the same fate as several other such reports commissioned by the Government in the past—being consigned to complete oblivion. Critics who, while welcoming the report, had predicted that the Government would do precious little in terms of acting on its recommendations are proving to be correct. Their argument that the Congress Party would use the report simply as a Muslim vote-grabbing gimmick, but that, for fear of losing Hindu votes, it would refuse to implement its suggestions appears to be solidly backed by the fact that the report has, for all purposes, been shoved into the cold storage.

Pressed by Muslim and leftist groups to specify what steps the Government has taken in implementing the Sachar Report's recommendations to address the stark poverty of the country's Muslims, who, in half a century after Independence, are said to have been reduced to a state even more 'backward' than the Dalits or former 'Untouchables', the Ministry of Minority Affairs placed a note dealing with "Follow-up Action on the Recommendations of the Sachar Committee" before Parliament this August. The note clearly reveals that the Government has actually done precious little, if at all, as far as the recommendations of the Sachar Report go. It does not specify any time frame or budget allocation for the programmes it mentions, thereby providing the Government with an easy excuse not to implement these programmes at all. Crucial measures needed for Muslim empowerment, including steps to ensure justice to Muslim victims of (often state-sponsored) communal violence, distribution of land and house sites to landless Muslim families, ensuring proper inclusion of Backward Caste Muslims in the state-level Other Backward Caste lists and ensuring that they, too, benefit from the reservation policy, extending Scheduled Caste status and the benefits that go with it to Dalit Muslims (a step suggested by another Government-appointed team, the Ranganath Mishra Commission) are conveniently left ignored.

The complete lack of seriousness of the Congress Government, which touts itself as the saviour of the Muslims, in addressing Muslim marginalization is also evident from its having completely ignored the Action Plan prepared by the High-Level Committee under the Minister of State for Human Resource Development, M.A.A.Fatmi, that deals with issues related to Muslim education raised in the Sachar Report. This committee submitted its proposed action-plan early this year. Among the numerous recommendations that it made were launching literacy campaigns, adult education centres, girls' schools and vocational training institutes, in all districts of high Muslim concentration, and expanding the already existing madrasa 'modernization' scheme. It suggested a sum of almost 5000 crore rupees for implementing its action plan during the eleventh Five-Year Plan period. However, most of these recommendations were ignored in the 2007-8 Budget, which provided only a miniscule sum for educational projects meant specifically for Muslim institutions and Muslim-dominated areas. This clearly suggests that the Government is unwilling to act on the suggestions even of its own high-level committee on Muslim education.

Even on heads related to minorities announced in its Budget the Government clearly appears to be dragging its feet. The Finance Minister had announced that last year's budget would allocate money for 20,000 merit-cum-means scholarships for higher studies for students belonging to minority communities, but this promise was not implemented. This financial year's budget, the Finance Minister declared, would provide 72 crore rupees for pre-matriculation scholarships, 90 crore rupees for post-matriculation scholarships and 48.60 crore rupees for merit-cum-means graduate and post-graduate scholarships, all meant for students from minority communities. But yet, half a year after this announcement was made, no financial allocation has been made, a repeat performance of the Government's probably deliberate inaction last year.

Access to credit at low rates is particularly crucial for artisans and self-employed people, who form the bulk of the Muslim population. The media had made much of Manmohan Singh's 15 point programme for the welfare of the minorities, approved by the Cabinet in June 2006, which states 'It will be ensured that an appropriate percentage of the priority sector lending in all categories is targeted for the minority communities' However, here, too, it appears, precious little has been done. There has been considerable resistance to specifying the 'appropriate' percentage of priority sector loans to be targeted for the minority communities, leaving this directive to be left largely unimplemented.

As regards justice to Muslim victims of 'communal violence', in which agencies of the state often play a crucial role, as well as state-sponsored genocide, as in Gujarat, the record of the present Government is equally appalling. The Government did not accept the demand for a CBI inquiry into the major cases of killings of Muslims in the anti-Muslim pogroms in Gujarat five years ago. The Muslim victims of the Hashimpura massacre orchestrated by the Provincial Armed Constabulary are yet to get justice twenty years after the brutal killings. The culprits responsible for the destruction of the Babri Masjid and for the widespread loss of life that followed still roam free. The Congress-led government in Maharashtra continues to refuse to act on the Srikrishna Commission Report on the violence in Bombay, in which senior politicians and police officers were involved, which took a tragic toll of more than 800 Muslim lives. And so on.

Clearly, the hopes generated in the wake of the release of the Sachar Committee Report have proven to be short-lived. The Government cannot be allowed off the hook so easily. This calls for concerted efforts on the part of Muslim organizations, working with secular and leftist forces, to pressurize the Government to live up to its Constitutional mandate and to act on the recommendations of the Committee that it itself had set up.