‘Development’ leaves Muslims out

As the election verdict starts to sink in — for both the victors as well as losers — the question of Muslims and development has emerged as a major issue. Should there be a rupture from the trajectory followed so far? Is there a distinct Muslim question that requires special instruments and separate attention? That’s the core issue now.

If one goes by NDA’s mobilisational polemics, and Narendra Modi’s own utterances, the indications are clear.

Development, the Hindutva ideologues would like to educate us, is difference-blind. Any deviation from this principle amounts to ‘appeasement’ for vote bank politics — a euphemism for reaching out to Muslim electorates.

Therefore, special schemes reaching out to targeted beneficiaries among the minorities — Multi Sector Development Plan, scholarships, provisions for bank credits, leadership development programmes, directives to Kasturba Gandhi Vidyalayas, Scheme to Provide Quality Education in Madrasas and Infrastructure Development of Private Aided/Unaided Minority Institutions, all of which are designed to enhance girl education, address infrastructural needs, modernise madrasas, incentivise higher education and improve school retention — face closure.

For the liberal intelligentsia and much of our cultural elite, such spends are seen as ‘wasteful’ expenditure on social welfare. These ‘special purpose instruments’ have suddenly gone out of favour with even a section of Muslim intellectuals as they begin to strategically re-locate themselves vis-à-vis the new reality.

New prescriptions about ‘how to help Muslims’ have emerged, where the rhetoric of ‘equal treatment’ is posited against ‘preferential treatment’.

Hence, regulations that enhance accountability with respect to anti-minority violence are to be cast aside for they instil fear in the majority; any talk of enhancing representation is, of course, a taboo subject as it provokes a ‘reverse polarisation’ among the majority.

The citizenship is uniform, undifferentiated, sees no caste or creed — and so why should development agencies be sensitive towards specific needs?

Appeasement of none, development for everyone makes for perfect politics these days. Who could differ with such innocent expressions and noble intentions?

No one would — if the universality of approach had created uniformity of outcome; if claims to poverty reduction hadn’t been accompanied by increasing inequality; if the poor did not have a predictable social profile of dalits, tribals and Muslim backwards; and if Gujarat model had subsumed a Juhapura model.

Development feeds off under-development. It is not difficult to comprehend as to who bears the brunt of this economic model. Surely, there are some even among Muslims who have prospered — the occasional meat exporter (beneficiaries of the ‘pink revolution’), certain garment traders, a section of Muslim middle class — but for once, let’s see the glass half empty.

At an all-India level, and this is true in most states (including Gujarat), Muslims are twice most likely to be poor than the general population in urban areas, while in rural areas too they are among the poorest. If universal poverty reduction tools were to be applied, at best this would lead to poverty decline among Muslims at the same rate as among others.

In essence, poverty would perpetuate itself and impact education, health and employment, to name a few indices.

NSS figures recorded as recently as 2011-12 show Muslims have the lowest levels of education — lower than even SCs and STs. True, more Muslim children enter schools now, their retention remains extremely low.

Alarmingly high levels of self-employment with declining shares in relatively stable salaried employment do hint at an unstated process of exclusion.

The sheer enormity and uniqueness of Muslim under-development would ideally need exceptional measures, imaginative interventions, disbursal of resources and mobilisation of the beneficiary population.

Let me pre-empt a counter question: why can’t these results be achieved by applying universal modes of intervention — after all the poor have no religion and neither does the state. In principle, there is no quibble over this.

Take MGNREGA, which even its harshest critics have conceded as being successful in generating rural employment. However, despite high poverty levels among Muslims in the villages, the scheme has remained a virtual non-starter for them. One could blame it on prevailing corruption, official apathy or ‘institutional bias’, but what misses our eye is the fact that MGNREGA promised off-season employment to field labour while Muslims tend to be self-employed in skill-based non-agricultural activity.

Muslim women have extremely low worker population ratio (WPR), owing to cultural inhibitions on seeking work outside, but why can’t home-based activity be prioritised to cope with extreme poverty?

The UPA-I held some promise when ‘cultural minorityism’ was sought to be replaced with the pursuit for substantive concerns. But soon the momentum was lost — maximising political dividends became the pre-dominant motive.

Reservation, minority status, elevated claims of achieving targets became a smoke-screen for depleting allocations, shoddy planning, tardy implementation and erroneous targeting. The result was terribly unimpressive ground reports, as pointed out by the government’s Kundu Committee (2014).

There have been some achievements, nevertheless, in the UPA years — enhanced school enrolment, increased educational level among girls, some signs of poverty decline, greater credit flow, availability of services such as bank ATMs in minority concentrated localities. But much more could have been achieved in a decade.

There are many surveys, impact studies and field reports whose findings are dismissed by an ideologically blinkered and arrogant bureaucracy. The plain truth is: Targeted development is the pre-requisite for improving the lot of any section of population that has fallen behind.

But will a formation that boycotted the Sachar Committee (even though its spokespersons have ad nauseam cited the Gujarat figures), chose to ignore the Ranganath Misra Commission, refused to implement an innocuous scholarship disbursal scheme in Gujarat, and produced impediments in minorities’ pursuit of justice, be inclined to do so?

The writer is Associate Professor, Centre for the Study of Social Systems, JNU, Delhi

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