Context, Approach and Methodology

1. Minorities and Development

The Indian Constitution is committed to the equality of citizens and the responsibility of the State to preserve, protect and assure the rights of minorities in matters of language, religion and culture. That is why our national leaders while framing the Constitution, emphasized the doctrine of unity in diversity.

The United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Persons Belonging to National, Ethnic, Religious and Linguistic Minorities says that the promotion and protection of the rights of persons belonging to such minorities contribute to the political and social stability of the countries in which they live. Meeting their aspirations and ensuring their rights acknowledges the dignity and equality of all individuals and furthers participatory development. This in turn contributes to the lessening of tensions among groups and individuals. These factors are major determinants for stability and peace. All developed countries and most developing ones give appropriate emphasis to looking after the interests of minorities. Thus, in any country, the faith and confidence of the minorities in the functioning of the State in an impartial manner is an acid test of its being a just State.

As the processes of economic development unfold, pressures are likely to build up and intensify when there is unequal development and some groups or minorities lag behind in the development process. Ideally, development processes should remove or reduce economic and social obstacles to cooperation and mutual respect among all groups in the country. If development processes are misdirected, they may have the opposite effect. It is this aspect which is important and needs to be addressed so as to give confidence to minorities.

Since Independence, India has achieved significant growth and development. It has also been successful in reducing poverty and improving crucial human development indicators such as levels of literacy, education and health. There are indications, however, that not all religious communities and social groups (henceforth socio-religious communities – SRCs) have shared equally the benefits of the growth process. Among these, the Muslims, the largest minority community in the country, constituting 13.4 percent of the population, are seriously lagging behind in terms of most of the human development indicators. While the perception of deprivation is widespread among Muslims, there has been no systematic effort since Independence to analyse the condition of religious minorities in the country. Despite the need to analyse the socio-economic and educational conditions of different SRCs, until recently appropriate data for such an analysis was not generated by Government agencies. There have been welcome changes in the scope of data collection with respect to SRCs in the 1990s, which, in turn, has made this report possible. The current effort is the first of its kind to undertake a data-based research on the Muslims in India.

2. Mandate of the Committee

In recent years there has been a significant public debate on the conditions of minorities, especially Muslims. In the absence of any systematic analysis of available data, this debate has largely revolved around perceptions and rhetoric. It is hoped that with the publication of this report, one can pursue a more informed debate on these issues for influencing public policy.

A wide variety of policy initiatives and programmes have been launched by successive governments to promote the economic, social and educational development of the minority communities in India. However, while the Muslims have no doubt made some visible progress, the perception remains that the economic and educational gap between the Community and the rest of the SRCs has been widening. Once the ‘development deficit’ among Muslims is assessed policy interventions will need to be reviewed in the context of available evidence, and new initiatives launched to grapple with the marginalization of Muslims in the social, economic and political space.

Given this background, the Prime Minister constituted a ‘High Level Committee’ for preparation of a report on Social, Economic and Educational Status of the Muslim Community of India vide notification No. 850/3/C/3/05-Pol. Government of India, Prime Minister’s Office. The terms of reference of the Committee are reproduced below.

(a) Obtain relevant information from departments/agencies of the Central and State Governments and also conduct an intensive literature survey to identify published data, articles and research on the relative social, economic and educational status of Muslims in India at the state, regional and district levels, to address, inter alia, the following questions:

Ø In which States, Regions,Districts and Blocks do the Muslims of India mostly live?

Ø What are their asset bases and income levels relative to other groups across various States and Regions?

Ø What is the level of their socio-economic development in terms of relevant indicators such as literacy rate, dropout rate, maternal mortality rate (MMR), infant mortality rate (IMR) etc.? How does this compare with other communities in various States?

Ø What is their relative share in public & private sector employment? Does it vary across States and what is the pattern of the variation? Is the share in employment in proportion to their population in various States? If not, what are the hurdles?

Ø What is the proportion of Other Backward Classes (OBCs) from the Muslim community in the total OBC population in various States? Are the Muslim OBCs listed in the comprehensive list of OBCs prepared by the National and State Backward Classes Commissions and adopted by the Central and State Governments for reservation for various purposes? What is the share of Muslim OBCs in the total public sector employment for OBCs in the Centre and in various States in various years?

Ø Does the Muslim community have adequate access to education and health services, municipal infrastructure and bank credit provided by Government/public sector entities? How does this compare to access enjoyed by other communities in various States? What is the level of social infrastructure (schools, health centres, ICDS centres etc.) located in areas of Muslim concentration in comparison to the general level of such infrastructure in various States?

(b) Consolidate, collate and analyse the above information/literature to identify areas of intervention by Government to address relevant issues relating to the social, economic and educational status of the Muslim community.

3. Approach and Methodology

Worldwide, minorities tend to grapple with three types of inter-related issues:

Ø Issues Relating to Identity: Often differences in socio-cultural practices and backgrounds of minorities make them different from the rest of the population. Given the multiplicities of identities in India communities often face problems of mutual adjustment.

Ø Issues Relating to Security: Given certain conditions, a distinct set of people, small in numbers relative to the rest of the society, may feel insecure about their life, assets and well-being. This sense of insecurity may get accentuated if the relations between the minority and the majority communities are not cordial.

Ø Issues Relating to Equity: The minority community in a society may remain deprived of the benefits of opportunities that become available through economic development. The sense of inequity may be perceptual or a result of discrimination that the minority may face due to difference in "identity".

It is also evident that identity, security and equity related concerns are not identical across all minorities. In the same vein, in a differentiated society, many of these issues are not specific to the minority communities and segments of the majority community may also have to grapple with them. Given this broad perspective, it is useful to distinguish between three types of overlapping issues, that cut across the categories described above, faced by the Muslim community in India:

Ø Issues that are common to all poor people (Muslims are largely poor)

Ø Issues that are common to all minorities

Ø Issues that are specific to Muslims

For example, as we would argue several concerns relating to employment and education specific to Muslims may fall in the first category. Similarly, some aspects of identity and security may be common across minorities while some others may be specific to Muslims.

It needs to be recognized at the outset that issues related to identity, security and equity are intricately linked in complex ways. However, many of these linkages may be empirically intractable. The mandate given to the Committee essentially focuses on "equity" related concerns. Thus, while recognizing the linkages across issues, the report focuses on equity related problems.

In view of the above position, and the fact that differentiation in Indian society takes several forms, the Committee has analysed the conditions of Muslims in a comparative perspective. Unfortunately, it is not always possible to work with a uniform set of SRCs to undertake comparative analysis as different sources of data provide different types of information. Caste, religion and regional/linguistic differentials in economic, social and political spheres in India have a historical basis and are deeply influenced by the extant socio-economic relationships, some of which have persisted for centuries. The Indian socio-economic fabric is more complex than ordinarily believed because of various unique layers and segments, into which Indian society is divided and sub-divided.

Given its mandate and autonomy, the Committee was free to decide the data needs to address the issues listed above. And the Committee has been fairly eclectic and innovative in its use of data. It has collected data from various government departments and institutions at the Centre and the State levels for information on employment, development programmes and democratic participation in governance. Besides, Banks, Financial Institutions, Educational Institutions and Public Sector Undertakings (PSUs) also shared their data. However, the report is based mainly on the analysis of large-scale surveys and the Indian Census data. The most prominent among them is the data collected in various surveys by the National Sample Survey Organization (NSSO). In addition, we have also used the estimates from the National Family Health Surveys (NFHS) and the surveys undertaken by the National Council of Applied Economic Research (NCAER), National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) and the National Institute of Educational Planning and Administration (NIEPA). The availability of relevant data and information is a critical basis for effective policy making.

Given the diverse sources of data and the fact that often information exclusively on Muslims was not readily available the analytical categories created reflect the dictates of the Committee’s mandate while ensuring optimal utilization of available data. As a result, different SRC-sets have been used for different data sets.

The Census 2001 data has been used to understand the demographic profile, infrastructure availability and educational achievements at various levels. The SRC-set defined for this data set are:

Ø All or Total population

Ø Muslims

Ø SCs and STs

Ø Other Minorities (non-Muslim minorities along with some others who have not reported religion or are agnostics)

Ø All Hindus (in selected analyses)

NSSO 55th and 61st Round data have been used to analyse issues relating to employment, education, consumption patterns and levels of poverty. Unlike the Census, NSSO data allows identification of Other Backward Classes (OBCs). The SRC-set defined based on the NSS data are as follows:

Ø All or Total population

Banking data was received from different sources and each source was amenable to the creation of different SRC categories. The main source of data used is from the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) relating to the Prime Minister’s 15 Point Programme, where the following categories could be distinguished:

Ø All Persons

Ø Muslims

Ø Other Minorities

Ø All Others

Apart from the RBI data, the Committee got access to some data from the National Bank for Agricultural and Rural Development (NABARD), Small Industry Development Bank of India (SIDBI), National Minority Development and Finance Corporations (NMDFC) and National Backward Classes and Finance Development Corporation (NBCFDC). While in the case of NABARD and SIDBI, Muslims could be distinguished from the rest of the population, in NMDFC data, Muslims are distinguished from other minorities. In case of NBCFDC data, Muslim OBCs were distinguished from other OBCs.

Ø National Backward Classes Commission

Ø State Backward Classes Commission

Ø National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT)

As far as possible the categories defined have been used subject to the availability of information. In most cases, we have been able to get data only for all Muslims without the break up between Muslim OBCs and Muslims of the General category.

Detailed population estimates of SRCs can be defined by the available data from the NSSO 55th (1999-2000) and 61st Rounds (2004-05). Both the surveys provide information on caste affiliation in terms of SCs/STs and self-reported identification of OBCs from all religious communities. Such data is not available from the Indian Censuses and other surveys. According to these estimates about 41% of Muslims identified themselves as OBCs in 2004-05; this proportion was 32% in 1999-2000. Among the Hindus, about 43% reported OBC status in 2004-05 whereas it was 38% in 1999-2000, while about 31% people belonged to the SCs/STs categories in 2004-05.

Analytically it may be useful to disaggregate Muslims of SC/ST origin from others. Therefore, one can argue for a separate category of Muslims who report themselves as SC and ST in the NSSO surveys, as has been done in the case of OBCs. However, such a categorization does not seem desirable as the sample size in these sub-categories is likely to be too small to generate meaningful estimates. The share of OBC and general Muslims is adequate to generate reliable estimates with respect to different socio-economic variables from the NSSO survey data. However, the numbers concerned are too small when one looks at the "SC/ST" Muslims. Only 0.8% Muslims reported themselves as SCs; the share of Muslims reporting themselves as STs was even lower.