Kundu Committee will revive Diversity Index for Muslims |
Diversity index provides a perspective that emerging India must work with to change the mindset of the bureaucracy. |
New Delhi | 4th Jan 2014 |
 |  People hang posters to protest against Uttar Pradesh Government after the Muzaffarnagar riots while offering Friday prayers in Kolkata on 9 September. PTI he new committee appointed by the Central government to oversee the implementation of the recommendations made by the Justice Rajinder Sachar committee for the uplift of Muslims, is going to revive the proposal of Diversity Index. The committee is also going to look into the mismanagement of funds released for the Multi-Sectoral Development Programme (MSDP) in Minority Concentration Districts (MCDs). This was stated to The Sunday Guardian by Amitabh Kundu, who heads the new committee, in an e-mail response from Germany, where he is currently residing. Professor Kundu is with the Centre for Study of Regional Development at the Jawaharlal Nehru University. BJP's Prime Ministerial candidate Narendra Modi said at his recent rally in Mumbai that "not a penny" had been spent for MSDP. Kundu headed another committee earlier to develop the concept of Diversity Index, which was first mentioned in the Sachar Committee report. That committee had mooted a system in which work, housing and education were given priority for enforcing greater representation of Muslims. The government was supposed to make it work by incentivising the promotion of "diversity", or disincentivising its lack, as the case might be. However, the Ministry of Statistics shot down the proposal. "The Ministry of Statistics had objected to diversity index-based interventions on the ground that the information required for designing these do not exist. That is well taken. However, it is not for this Ministry to decide whether such information must be made available and diversity index-based interventions are required in the country," Kundu said. He added: "Diversity index provides a perspective that emerging India must work with to change the mindset of the bureaucracy. It is this vision which will be presented with a clear road map. I along with all our Committee members believe that no government in India will succeed even one full term if this perspective is not embraced in its policies and programmes." As far as the MSDP is concerned, Kundu confirmed that the committee will look into complaints received about its performance. The MSDP was launched by the Central government in 90 districts in the country with a high population of Muslims. However, it has been criticised by activists like Harsh Mander, who said in a report earlier that funds meant for the programme were being diverted and misused. The issue was raised in Parliament in the monsoon session. BJP MP from Jharkhand, Sudarshan Bhagar asked if the government had submitted the accounts of Rs 1,400 crore sanctioned for the programme. The ministry said that a total amount of Rs 2,935.93 crore was released for MSDP, out of which Rs 2,166.71 crore was used. The ministry did not give any information about the rest of the money. Kundu said, "This is a very important issue and our committee would look into the implementation problems of these programmes in some details, going beyond the official figures of allocation and expenditure. It would also try to find out if the problems are similar to other government schemes or if there are specific biases or attitudinal issues in the context of minority related missions and programmes. This is being done based on field level investigation in select states." In an interview to the BBC recently, Kundu said that Muslims were doing better in the rural areas than in urban centres. He also pointed out that the bureaucracy in the country was largely from the majority community, which may have something to do with it. Asked to clarify, he said, "It would be erroneous to blame only bureaucracy for that. Partition changed the socioeconomic composition of Muslims in urban areas. Societal prejudices also resulted in discrimination in labour, credit and housing market for them." |
Muslims prosper in Gujarat and Kerala; UP, Bihar the worst
Saturday, 22 March 2014 - 11:12am IST | Place: Mumbai | Agency: DNA
National Sample Survey data shows Maharashtra also augurs well for the community. Goa emerges the best in poverty eradication.
![muslim-children]( "Muslims prosper in Gujarat and Kerala; UP, Bihar the worst")
Image for representational purposes only. RNA Research & Archives
Kerala and Gujarat have emerged as the top two states in India where poverty among Muslims in both rural and urban areas declined drastically in the last seven years, according to the NationalSample Survey (NSS) statistics. The condition of Muslims in Maharashtra also improved in this period, but Uttar Pradesh and Bihar remained at the bottom of the list with the dubious distinction of having the most number of Muslims below poverty line.
In its front-page report headlined 'No country for Muslims', dna on Thursday quoted an interim report by the Amitabh Kundu-led committee which highlighted that the socio-economic condition of Muslims had not improved despite the implementation of welfare schemes since the acceptance of the Justice Sachar report in 2006. The Union government in August 2013 formed a 10-member committee to evaluate the socio-economic condition of the Muslim community since the implementation of the Sachar committee's recommendation.
The recent findings are part of a research paper by Dr Kundu, who analysed the state-wise NSS statistics. In rural Gujarat for instance, the number of Muslims below poverty line (BPL) fell from 31% (about one-third of their population) in 2004-05 to a measly 7% in 2011-12. Comparison of the same period reveals that those in the BPL population in urban areas also declined from 42% to 14.6%.
Meanwhile, the maximum per capita expenditure (MPCE – an indicator of economic well-being) of Muslims in rural Gujarat went up from Rs 209 to Rs 291. In urban areas of the state, it shot up from Rs 259 to Rs 328 in the last seven years, according to the research paper.
In Kerala, the decline was from 26.5% to 8% in rural areas and from 23.7% to 3.5% in urban areas. Muslims in 'God's own country' had one of the highest per capita expenditure across India in 2011-12 – Rs 365 in rural areas and Rs 420 in urban, an increase from Rs 303 and Rs 320 respectively in 2004-05.
The percentage of Muslims in the BPL category in Maharashtra fell from 47.9% in 2004-05 to 28.6% in 2011-12 in urban areas. The decline in rural areas was from 40% to 28.6% in the same period.
Dr Kundu confirmed to dna that his research paper will be included in the committee's final report which will be submitted to the Centre by June.
"I am neither a BJP supporter nor a Narendra Modi fan, but as far as the welfare of the Muslim community is concerned, the facts say that Gujarat did much better in the past seven years compared to other states," Dr Kundu, who recently retired from JNU, told dna. Abhay Pethe, professor of economy at the University of Mumbai, was guarded in his response. "We have observed the trend in the NSS data. Since the elections are round the corner, I would prefer not to comment on this," he said.
Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal and Bihar still have a large percentage of the Muslim population below poverty line, the statistics reveal. In 2004-05, almost half of the Muslim population in UP was below poverty line. It came down to one-third in the last seven years. The change in the average MPCE of the community in UP in this period was little. It was the same in West Bengal and Bihar.
Goa and Nagaland are on top of the list when it comes to poverty eradication of Muslims. Seven years ago, more than one-third of their Muslim population was below poverty line; it was nil in 2011-12 in rural and urban areas. The rural areas of Pondicherry, Sikkim, Mizoram, Meghalaya and Himachal Pradesh also reported zero BPL population of Muslims. However, in urban areas, 10-20% of Muslims are still below poverty line. In MPCE, Andaman & Nicobar Islands tops the country in both urban (Rs 612) and rural (Rs 596) categories.
http://www.dnaindia.com/india/report-muslims-prosper-in-gujarat-and-kerala-up-bihar-the-worst-1971244
http://usindiapolicy.org/documents/inclusion/DiversityIndex_expgrp.pdf Full text of Expert Committee Report on Diversity Index (2008)
https://www1.oecd.org/els/emp/42546020.pdf Employment and inequality outcomes in India by Amitabh Kundu, PC Mohanan (2009)
Executive Summary
India has come to enjoy a distinct advantage in labour market compared to most developed and less developed countries due to the fast changing age distribution of population. Further, the decline in worker population ratio in the adult age group has been stalled while the same has gone up significantly for women in recent years. However, the trends and pattern of economic growth does not guarantee that the growth in job opportunities will be equal to that of the working-age population or higher than that, after wiping out the backlog of unemployment.
The performance of the economy in the nineties makes a significant departure from that in earlier decades in terms of GDP growth as also a number of other economic indicators. Notwithstanding the high growth in the number of employed as also employment days during the past decade, concerns have been expressed with regard to low growth in productivity and fragmentation of labour market. Institutional and social barriers have resulted in labour market segmentation which has come in the way of dissemination of the benefits of growth to workers in backward regions, small towns, rural areas and underprivileged socio-economic categories of population. The inequality across social and religious groups has gone up in rural areas and small towns but not in large cities. Scheduled Tribe population have benefited the least in terms of consumption expenditure followed by Scheduled Caste and Muslim population. Other religious groups like Parsis and Sikhs have done relatively well along with upper caste Hindu population. Gender inequality has also emerged as a major area of policy concern.
Rural poverty has got concentrated in a few inaccessible and less developed areas and those with high incidence of socially disadvantaged population. Urban poverty, however, is high not only in backward areas/states but many of the developed states. Incidence of urban poverty can, thus, be attributed to lack of development as also to the nature and pattern of development. Importantly, vertical inequality in urban areas has grown faster than rural areas. As a consequence of all these, the elasticity of poverty reduction to income growth is likely to be less in the Eleventh Plan (2007-2012), compared to that of earlier plans.
Migration for employment from rural to urban areas emerge as a major tool of poverty alleviation, the prospects being definitely better for the migrants into large cities than those in small towns. There is, Thus, a need to rescue migration studies from a negativist framework which relates it with immiserisation, epidemics, illegality, pressure on urban infrastructure and view it as an outcome of individual‟s initiative to improve his/her socio-economic condition. Unfortunately, this window of migration is slowly closing down for the unskilled, illiterate population, particularly into large cities. Households in low expenditure categories report low percentage of migration, even of short duration variety. The metropolitan cities particularly are resisting immigration of unskilled and illiterate male population due to changes in the requirements in labour market, reflected in decline in the percentage of poor and deceleration in the rate of population growth in these cities.
Employment and unemployment scenario is characterised by relative stability in worker population ratio (for working age population) with a slight declining trend over the years, reflecting greater staying power (unemployment affordability) among better-off households, young adults going for higher education and frictional unemployment among the educated. This relative stability and minor changes in unemployment rate, despite violent fluctuations in income growth, suggest that employment tends to be unaffected by short term crisis. While the employment in organised sector is protected by the system of legislated benefits, those in unorganised sector cannot afford unemployment due to their poor economic conditions.
There has been a shift in the pattern of employment in recent years with the process of casualisation being stalled and self employment going up both in rural and urban areas for men as well as women. To an extent, this reflects production units hiring individuals on contract for „jobs‟ rather than employing them directly on a casual basis and the poor households evolving a strategy for survival by drawing more family members into work. This is helping in creating of a low cost support system for the organised sector, particularly in urban areas. Small entrepreneurs, seeking linkage with formal sectors or global market, are trying to formalise their arrangements with their workers through such contracts or by employing them on a monthly rather than daily basis, in order to meet the deadlines or specifications of the contracted jobs. A large part of women have been absorbed in various low paid services including in domestic help, facilitating the middle class to respond to time requirements of the global activities, resulting in significant rise of regular employment. Unfortunately, this has not helped in pushing up the real wages of the unorganised workers including those employed on a regular basis.
The formal industries and business owe their growth and profitability partly to employing workers in an informal basis without their being covered under social security system. Their growth is facilitated by informal industries supplying semi finished products at cheap rates and emergence of a low cost support system. A decreasing share of workers compensation in rapidly growing sectors reveals direct and indirect engagement of unorganised workers with very little increase in formal employment. A small segment of the informal sector is linked with the market and grows in response to the trends in demand and profitability.
The present social security system covers less than 10% of the total workforce, mostly belonging to the formal sector. Attempts have been made to cover the unorganised workers in a piece meal fashion through a plethora of legislations. The Parliament passed the Unorganised Sector Worker's Social Security Bill last December and it is yet to be operationalised. The existing legislated and occupational benefit plans are in urgent need of overhaul in order to cover the unorganised workforce in the country.
There has not been a major backwash effect of global economic crisis in terms of reduction in wages or informal employment in India. The deceleration in growth in some of the rapidly growing sectors has brought down the aggregative growth rate to about 7% in the current year, 2 percentage points below that of the previous five years. However, concrete data are not available for assessing its effect on employment at macro level, as its absorption in the informal sector would take some time and this, in any case, is unlikely to be very high. The absence of a linkage between growth in income and employment has been responsible for unemployment rate not shooting up in the periods of crisis. The benefits of high growth in the last five years were not shared with the informal workers. Understandably, there is not much scope for reduction in their wages or employment in the current year as that would make marginal impact in terms of cost reduction. There are however indications that the economy would see an upturn in the next few months.
Unemployment, poverty rates high among Muslims: Study
Poverty among urban Muslims twice as high as national avg