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Promising start

The report of the Rajinder Sachar Committee, tabled in Parliament less than a year ago, which had for the first time offered detailed empirical data pointing to the continuing serious deprivation and disadvantage faced by the Muslim community in India, represented a path-breaking move by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and the United Progressive Alliance Government. The government was justifiably proud of the 400-page study. Since tabling the Action Taken Report on the panel ’s recommendations last week, it has given shape to two of them: an Equal Opportunity Commission, modelled on the United Kingdom’s Race Relations Act, 1976, to serve as a grievance redressal mechanism, and a diversity index to link government-funding to inclusive recruitment policies. A panel headed by jurist N.R. Madhava Menon will decide the structure and framework of the EOC while a working group will formulate the diversity index. These are far-reaching initiatives, and given the right push, could radically transform the neglected area of Muslim rights. The Sachar document displayed a sensitivity rarely seen in an officially mandated exercise. It not only established that Muslim “deficits and deprivation” were unacceptably severe but also unveiled a bold new blueprint for the “inclusion and mainstreaming” of a community that had long felt “discriminated against.” More important, the Sachar report represented a first of sorts in its empirically derived conclusion that Muslims, contrary to the political propaganda that they have been the beneficiaries of “appeasement policies” by and large, ranked below most other Hindu socio-religious categories (SRCs) in almost all indicators.

The moves made by the government to follow up on the Sachar report have triggered speculation that the UPA has sought to neutralise the gathering Left opposition to the Indo-U.S. nuclear deal. For its part, the Bharatiya Janata Party has predictably raised the bogey of Muslim appeasement. To the extent that the government actually fulfils the commitments made in the Sachar report, a scrutiny of its motives is not of any real utility. The strength of the Sachar report was precisely that it was not intended as a populist, one-time solution. With a more long-term approach in mind, the panel has argued for positioning diversity as a key feature of public policy and suggested measures for improving access to education and increasing employment opportunities for Muslims. An imaginative policy initiative such as the Sachar committee could be robbed of its essence should the government view this exercise solely from the point of view of electoral calculations. It must be recognised that addressing the issues of deprivation and disadvantage faced by the Muslim community is part of a larger national commitment.

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