Politicians vie for poor-Muslim votes

Thanks for exploring and informing the truth behind Indian Democracy and secularism by the Economist.
Its a cruel fun that the extract and appeal of democracy are yet
to reach to the Dallits and Minorities of India.The Brahmanites democracy which called the biggest but basically 30% of Indian population is enjoying freedom yet to reach nearly 70% of the total.Dallits and Minorities are using by the Congress party of India like Bangladesh Awami League is using the head of Hindus in Bangladesh as their only polotical shelter.

Sir,

I was just reading "Creating a World Without Poverty: Social Business and the Future of Capitalism" by Muhammad Yunus, who won the Nobel Prize in Peace for his work against poverty. Anyone interested in fighting poverty should read his book. He outlines two good business models to end poverty:

1. Micro-credit: This is giving poor people small loans to develop a small business. The business helps the poor greatly. It is becoming very common in Bangladesh, where Yunis started the concept. I believe that is is becoming more common in India.

2. Social Business: This is a non-profit business. For example, a factory that gives all the profits to the poor. Or a telephone company that offers cheap service to those who can afford it, and then uses the profits to give free service to those who can't.

Does anyone know more about these two business models in India? I believe that it could help the poor greatly. The government should to more to promote these business models if it wants to end poverty for good.

Matching the right solutions are as important as the correct grasp of the problems. India is honest enough to recognise that problems exist. That is good. But she makes serious mistakes in the solutions chosen.

My experience is: It is urbanisation and education that has been a better leveller of social inequalities. Reservations and quotas, which many countries are totally against, are preferred by India's elite, because they view them as POLITICAL TOOLS.

This Economist article, rightly, highlights the political thinking behind the move. To the Congress party, 'Reservation and Quotas' have

a) ensured many, many election victories,

b) masked their failures, which are many,

c) helped the party to 'divide and rule' castes and religious communities

d) helped the party to 'appear as the saviour of minorities'!!

The Congress Party has ruled INDIA for nearly 55 years since 1947. They have done some good, but a lot more that is not good.

Partition of India is blamed on British policy of separate provisions for Hindus and Muslims. BUT what the Congress Party has been doing is very similar to what the British had done. In the Raj days, there was no 'Indian Mujahideen', which showed that Indian Muslims were happy with the separate provisions for them.

Apparently, 60 years of 'politically correct' secularism and nursing of vote banks through a variety of concessions, such as the 'Haj Subsidy' have not satisfied some Islamists. Perhaps, the latest move would make a difference.

It's time to call a spade a spade.

The India reporting staff and editor at The Economist display a rabid and wilful anti-Hindu bias. Almost every week the story on India is about the oppression of everyone and everything by Hindus. I do not cite a litany of examples here, but regular readers will know and be able to cite references. As an anecdotal case to point, here is what we had last fortnight:

....."a milder version of BJP's hate-filled creed."

We're not biased at The Economist then, are we? I mean the degree and frequency with which this occurs is just disgusting. I wonder whether the other side of the coin would be tolerated.

More simply, do you not have anything else interesting to report about South Asia apart from wheeling out the same drivel every week?

The answer to good education for the poor was given by Amratya Sen in his book ' the argumentative Indian'
Once the problem of pay for teachers was solved many years ago , the only impediment to good education was the teachers turning up to work

The Indian system has an accountability problem , and when it comes to teachers , it needs to have an Inspectorate system of Public accountability.

Teachers should not have a job for life either. Bad teachers should be sacked. We Indians give too much reverence to people who do not always deserve it

"In six decades reservations have failed to lift up many dalits."

The truth is, 3500 year old habits die hard. Sixty years, translating to about 2 - 3 generations is simply not long enough to dismantle such an ancient system of social stratification. Add to that high levels of corruption in India to further slow the process. But that said, since economic liberalisation in 1991, my understanding is that dalits are being lifted out of poverty at a faster rate. Not sure its fast enough though.

I suspect a large proportion of the Muslim-convert dalits were probably on the bottom rungs of the dalit ladder (economically at least - the jizya imposed by the mughals would have hit the poorest people first). And thus they may potentially be even more disadvantaged than the non-Muslim dalits.

Call for quotas for Muslims is utterly ill-conceived and irresponsible, aimed at wooing Muslim votes. No surprise, therefore,that the demand was raised in a rally on 4th of March'2010, of all places, in Patna(Bihar), where the state elections are scheduled to be held later this year. Such a demand is likely to vitiate the rather tranquil communal climate seen these days and give a big handle to those who use such demands for whipping anti-Muslim hysteria.

What Muslims actually need is education and hard labour to come up on their own.They should shun opportunist community and vote-catching politicians who have caused more harm than good to them in the past.

First, they create communal passion by raising contentious issues then, when situation goes out of hand, they simply vanish from the scene, leaving the happless community to fend for itself. This is what had happened during the Ayodhaya demolition days and may happen in future also if communal passions are aroused and backlash takes place.

It is time Muslims learned from their past mistakes and behaved in a responsible manner. Yes, there may be genuine grievances and complaints of discrimination against them.But these can be addressed by creating more educational and economic opportunities for them, not by reservations.

The case of the Muslims in India is full of nuances and layers, and cannot be generalized. Just like the Hindus, Indian Muslims are not a monolithic entity. There are different communities and sects among them, all of whom are at different levels in the social ladder.

The biggest problem for the North Indian Muslims (the most numerous of all) has been their suspicion of Western-style education and thought, and a retreat into orthodoxy. There have been other communities, such as the Bohras, and the Shias who have been more enlightened and thus more successfully integrated into the mainstream of Indian society.

The North has also been more communalized than other parts of India, with much lower industrialization and privatization. In the rest of India, because private industries do most of the hiring, there is a better culture of meritocracy and almost zero discrimination. In the north, old prejudices dominate.

India needs to focus on improving the delivery systems for its education and health services, instead of focusing on 'reservations' as a panacea. I think the Congress leadership knows this, but will still make some piecemeal populist gestures for votes. I won't begrudge them their pound of flesh, as long as they continue to build up the nations primary education and healthcare infrastructure, so that all communities, irrespective of their religious/caste identity, benefit.

Indica:

The different establishments and foreign agencies over the decades trying to destabilize democracy in Bangladesh, but people of Bangladesh are democrat in true sense. I’ll not argue with you as India continuing with democracy for decades but you should asses what are the lope holes of your democracy which yet to reach the destitues, that I wanted so say.

International media most of the time busy with the negative news of Bangladesh like flood, drought, hurricane effect and political unrest etc. The issue you have raised is also the same. The 1997 so called peace agreement with CHT people with our the then government was brokered by India which is yet to be implemented.7-8 people died in the clash as some people were opposing the agreement. If you treat it as massacre then what you'll say when dozens of people are being killed mostly Buddhist and Christians in NE India everyday by your security forces? Have you any statistics how many people is being killed all over India in same fashion? In this particular subject Bangladesh is far better than India and yes Sir, you may learn something from Bangladesh.

Indian Muslims live with following painful truths

1. Muslims fought and created their own countries just 60 years back. Hence they are constant suspects of partition.

2. The wealthy and educated muslims from UP and Bihar crossed over to Pakistan and those at the bottom were left behind. Further Lack of education, mainly self inflicted has kept them backward.

3. Their faith demands loyalties beyond the Indian nationhood and calls for alligiance to deen

In such a scenario any demand for reservation is a sure recipe for another wave of majority resentment and backlash. Reservation is a dead concpet any way. It made sense in a socialist economy of VP Singh days, where government jobs were much desired. In this cut throat , every one for himslef world, reservation is just an empty promise. And no one bettter than Congress to encash an empty promise that will never be kept

For the purposes of education , cultural values and ambitions are extremely important.

The Imams and Mullahs are like the Witch Doctors of Africa. They encourage their flock to keep away from better and higher education.
That way their flock will not question the religion, nor the pronouncement of the Mullahs and imams on matters of religion.

The proof of this is everywhere. In fact this newspaper had a report on the lower standards of Islamic education everywhere.

The problem is so bad that In the Sunni world , every text book is censored ( Including Science books ) by these religious heads.

Again this newspaper also did a study on the differences between the the different ethnic people in Britain , compared to the Anglo British people.
I will compare the Hindu Asians with the Muslim asians.

The two groups had comparable results in Primary school , but the Muslims dropped the ball at high school and university level.

This shows up to this day , where the proportion of Muslim students at University is so much lower in Britain compared to their proportion in the general population.

Will it ever improve

Subramanium@ wannado.fr
You are secular by your constitution but you kept a bigger number of people (mostly Dalits and Minorities) under-privileged by practice. If they raise question about your effort you are asking about their patriotism, have you really such moral authority?

indica,

You wrote : "Reservations and quotas, which many countries are totally against, are preferred by India's elite, because they view them as POLITICAL TOOLS."

Really? The first quotas for the scheduled castes and scheduled tribes were established during the writing of India's constitution. I doubt very much that Nehru and his colleagues, the founders of modern India, had political tools in mind when they decided to establish those quotas.

By the way, for the OBCs quotas, this has nothing to do with Congress. The idea was initiated by the Janata Dal.

All the lessons of behavioral economics and "incentives" are forgotten when its comes to religion based politics.

Indica,

A mohamedan's loyalty is first and foremost to a fellow mohamedan, not to the contry where he lives. His reaction in case of dispute between a muslim and non-muslim is not "who is right?, but take the side of a muslim. Can you trust a muslim? Certainly not me.

Every country owes an obligation to all its poor and weaker sections of society. Certainly, governments must pay attention to minorities. However, there has to be parity between all groups. Special treatment is a problem in a large, multi-group country like India, as it is in a family of several children. If one child is singled out for special attention,

a) the parents must be conscious of the impact of that step upon the other children and

b) the parents must ask themselves, "Are we really giving this child any long term benefit? Will he/she continue to avoid his/her responsibility and get it into the habit of blaming others for his/her plight?

Despite the 'Reservation, Quota' Raj's 60 years of life, I am yet to come across a reliable study of its impact on the intended beneficiaries. Yes, a 'creamy layer' is getting thicker. That much is all too evident. There are very well off Dalits and BCs, whose children 'walk into' university places, government jobs.

These 'reservation' policies and the Indian way of politicising everything, helped by a jerky, foolish media, has driven MERIT out of the door. Indian 'system' does not notice calm, intelligent and reliable officials and politicians any longer.

The paradigm of a 'clever' person in India today, is one who 'humours and bullies his voters, manages goondas, cheats and makes illicit money in crores and is unscrupulous in making outrageous allegations in order to gain political advantages.

'Er Zahid'

It is in this background that I look at all measures to spread the 'Reservation and Quota' Raj. It may be Muslims this time, next, perhaps, Jains, Buddhists, Sikhs, Gujjars, Minas, Naickers, Naidus, Kurmis, Gurkhas and so on. Where would we end up?

Muslims are Indian citizens, equal to all others in their rights and responsibilities in India.

Islam recognises no 'caste'. Many Hindus, especially of the 'lower' castes converted to Islam for this reason. Still do. Therefore, it seems strange to ask for reservation for 'Dalit' Muslims, after years of repeating "See, unlike in your Hindu religion, we in Islam have no caste".

In life, it is rare to 'have one's cake and eat it too to the full'!!

On the other hand, as Louis Dumont, the French anthropologist has argued in his "Homo hierarchicus", this sort of classification exists amongst ALL religions in India. "Ashraf" ' "Ajlaf", "Sheikh", "Syed", "Maliki" and many other divisions do exist amongst Muslims of the sub-continent. Even in Pakistan caste and tribal identities exist, notwithstanding the propaganda to the contrary.

Yet, the question has to be asked: "Are there 'Dalit" Muslims being discriminated against by other Muslims to such an extent that they cannot progress without reservation?"

We cannot exist with the sort of fudging that India's rulers are constantly throwing at us.

I believe that both the Sachar and Ranganath Misra Committees' Reports do not stand proper scrutiny.

A secular country should NOT discriminate on grounds of religion, for good or for ill. The Haj Subsidy, for example, does not accord with India's secularism.

Not even Muslim countries offer such a religious pilgrimage subsidy.

'Qumar'

I appreciate your points. They are fair.

It is unfortunate that Indian Parliament failed to pass the Uniform Code Bill and parties went into politics of Vote banks. India was partitioned on 2 nation theory but has never was accepted by India and thus India had more Muslims population till recently than even Pakistan.It is true that their loyalty had been questioned but it is because of few miscreant. Muslims are found in all branches of Govt and few have given their lives for the nation while fighting against Pakistan.
It is unfortunate that because of there being misled by present Ulmas or Imams that this segment has still failed to educate themselves and those who have utilized the education system are all over the world.One of the riches man in India is a Muslim. Where Muslim leaders have failed to minority is their own allegiance to
faith first and motherland second.The question of faith arise due to partition and present terrorism situation.
BJP Rath Yatrs also left some insecurity and riots after demolition of Babri Masjid and program in Gujrat did created religious animosity.
It is unfortunate that Muslims are not utilizing the facilities of eduction and go to Madrassas and thus learn only religious education. These children do not get chance to mix with other nationals and a life in ghetto cannot be very productive. Polio vaccine cannot be given as the Imam tells them it is being given to make them impotent or loose their fertility. Such nonsense to a person with no education and only word of Imams is truth.

With education one can mix with others socially and learn personally about others faith and become a productive person of society. No one in Metro areas care what your faith is unless you wish to remind them
Customs in India are very old and complete changes in 60 years are not possible but Quota system for any group is a non productive.

all Indian citizens wants equal rights and treated as equal and not live or depend on quota system. It is duty of every Indian to demand a Uniform Code Bill so that every citizen can feel equal

'Subramaniam@Wanado.fr.'

No, it is NOT true. It was not true even in 1947. Remember that NWFP, now part of Pakistan (and a very troubled part of it) did not vote for partition or the Muslim League? In Punjab, the Unionist party, a joint Hindu-Sikh-Muslim party was elected under the Government of India Act, 1935?

In present day India, Indian Muslims' sympathy for Pakistan as an "Islamic Nation" must have weakened considerably, if ever, it was there. There are many open critics of Pakistan amongst the Indian Muslim community. Do you read the columns of M.J. Akbar, in the Times of India? Have you listened to the speeches of the present Chief Minsiter of Kashmir?

Sorry, your view is, perhaps, a bit out of date.

'ZWyX'

My remarks you quote relate to our times. Yes, there were good intentions when the Indian Constitution was drafted by the Constituent Assembly. Since the 1975 'emergency', Indian politics has taken a turn for the worse. At present, a picture of 'Mondalisation' of Indian politics, administration, judiciary and universities, is but one step away from total anarchy.

Please remember also that the Indian Constitution has been amended close to 100 times, since 1951. I am not sure, the Makers of the Constitution would have thought the Constitution would be so diluted.

We all start with 'good intentions', no doubt.

'halabd'

Sir, you are back with your favourite point? I request sir, that your country, Bangladesh, set a model example for India on what 'true' democracy should be like. India will learn some lessons from your country, I am sure of it.

Incidentally, why are the Thai, Burmese, Sri Lankan and Japanese Buddhists demonstrating against Bangladesh, alleging that many Buddhists have been recently massacred there? NHK (Japanese International TV) had a long news item on the subject.

Are your Buddhist Chakmas happy?

'retired citizen'

Sir / Madam,
I agree with you that every family of every community must provide good, relevant education to its young. Learning sacred books by heart is only the BEGINNING and NOT the end of education. Whether it is Madrassas or Veda Patasalas, a religious education has its limitations as well as merits.

Religious heads, can mislead as well as lead their followers. I was disappointed when in Uttar Pradesh, some Muslim Ulema told Muslims NOT to accept Polio Vaccine. They said it was to make them impotent, so that there will be less Muslim babies.

In India, Hindu religious leaders are closely scrutinised. Even a Sankaracharya can be embroiled, for mostly political reasons, in a murder case. [Incidentally, that case seems to be disintegrating, because the manufactured evidence is dissolving]
Before important elections you would notice such attacks on Hindu religious leaders.

But there is none in India to scrutinise the activities of Muslim religious heads, Imams and what is going on in Madrassas. The 'secular media' mostly kept quiet when some UP Ulemas issued a Fatwa saying that a daughter-in-law raped by her father-in-law must divorce her husband and marry the father-in-law, her rapist!!

India's politics over-comes common sense on a number of issues.
Budhdha Deb Bhattacharya, the communist CM of West Bengal was so worried at some stage as to the nature and scope of Madrassa 'education' that he called for some review. But with elections coming (with 20% Muslim electorate) he withdrew his statements.

One more reservation bill. You have gotta be kidding me. Instead, Why dont we just make one small quota for general category or people who are better off and rest 80-90% should be given to OBC, SC, ST and other minorities.

Why govt is not making quota based on economic conditions of people rather than making on caste system.

According to constitution reservation was supposed to last only for 15-20 years but for past 60 years reservation bill is being amended and passed unanimously and how many BPLs have brought out of poverty by this quota.Ironically Every year like Gurjars, many castes and tribes are being added to minorities. If a hardworking and educated family want to provide good education to their children they better get themselves registered into minority.....A perfect shortcut to Success.