The other
message
The report of
the Sachar Committee is informative, meticulous and restrained. It has tested
generally held prejudices and preconceptions about Muslims, and proved many to
be wrong. It tells us graphically what it means to be a Muslim in India; even
more, it tells us how it feels to be a Muslim. But it was not its purpose to
tell us what it means to be someone who has all the Muslims’ characteristics
without being a Muslim – in other words, how far the Muslims’ plight reflects the
Indian society and how much of it is peculiar to Muslims. But it has given
figures to answer these questions to some extent.
No community is
homogeneous. We often refer to an average; but that average is a mean of
disparate quantities. On average, Muslims in British India were better off.
Partition left more Muslims with higher incomes in Pakistan and more Muslims with
lower incomes in India – partly because West Pakistan was home of rich farmers,
and partly because a larger proportion of rich Muslims – for instance,
businessmen from Bombay and Gujarat – left for Pakistan. Partition did not
impoverish Muslims; but it left more poor and fewer rich Muslims in India than
in Pakistan.
A higher
proportion of Muslims lives in towns than in villages. A higher proportion than
in the general population are businessmen. These two factors should make them
richer than average. A higher proportion of them are small businessmen and
artisans; a higher proportion lives in the poor states of UP, Bihar and West
Bengal; and a smaller proportion of Muslim women work. These three factors
should make them poorer. My estimate is that higher urbanization would raise
incomes by 6 per cent, and lower women’s work participation rate would lower
them by 12 per cent. Muslims earn about the same as others in villages, and
about 25 per cent less than others in cities – the bigger the city, the greater
the difference. Their chances of being poor are 80 per cent higher than of the
general population in towns as well as villages. I cannot quantify the effect
of their being more in business and their being small businessmen. So I cannot
work out what proportion of their disadvantage is not associated with factors
that have nothing to do with their being Muslims. But whereas amongst Hindus,
the poorest are labourers, a high proportion of them agricultural, the poorest
amongst Muslims are self-employed craftsmen and peddlers – people living on the
fringes of urban society.
From this I
infer that the reasons for poverty are different amongst Hindus (amongst whom I
include SC/STs) and Muslims. Amongst Hindus there is a large section in
villages which has little or no land and which works on others’ farms for a
pittance. It sees its way up in life in migrating to or working in towns, in occupations
created by industrialization. Amongst Muslims there is a large section which lives
by small-scale production or petty trade, whose livelihood is being eroded by
modern industry and services. The deindustrialization in the last two centuries
that historians talk about is still continuing, and Muslims are its current
victims. Development is an opportunity for Hindus and a threat for Muslims –
not so much because of discrimination as of their location in traditional
society.
I tried
imperfectly to analyse the effects of economic factors on the incomes of
Muslims above; for education, the Sachar Commission itself did a probit
analysis. It does not give the results, but summarizes them as follows. Once
Muslims get through secondary school, their chances of going on to graduation
and post-graduation are no lower than for others. But the likelihood that they
will go to school, and that once they do, they will complete the course, are
much lower. In this respect Muslims did better than OBCs and SC/STs some decades
ago; their relative performance has worsened. And education is the highway in
our country to highly paid jobs as well as to modern business. This is the
other factor behind Muslims’ poverty – they receive less education. (Incidentally,
only 4 per cent of Muslim children go to Madrasas.)
I can think of
three reasons why fewer Muslim children go to school or finish school. First,
schooling is more difficult for them. Surprisingly, over a half of the Muslim
children in Karnataka, Maharashtra and Andhra speak Urdu. All three states have
thousands of Urdu-medium schools; but their results in school-leaving
examinations are dismal. Obviously their quality is poor, and the prospects of
their alumni must be equally poor. So even where Urdu schools are available,
Muslim children would need to go to non-Urdu schools if they wanted a decent
education. In UP and Bihar they do because Hindi is close to Urdu, and the
number of Urdu schools is small. Elsewhere, a significant proportion of them
may find education in the local language more difficult than for natives who
speak it as a first language. Since they live amongst the natives, however, they
cannot find the language too difficult; it is no worse than being educated in
English, though the rewards may be more modest. Second, their families may follow
occupations that do not require education, and may find their child labour too
valuable to fritter away in schools. This factor is not peculiar to Muslims;
child labour is ubiquitous amongst poor families of all religions – despite the
present government’s ineffectual ban. But other communities are sending their
children to school despite the opportunity cost; Muslims are doing so less.
That brings me
to the third factor, Muslims may find the prospect of a better job as a result
of education less attractive; in other words, there may be job discrimination.
Is there? Muslims certainly think so; Sachar Commission received much verbal
evidence to this effect. A smaller proportion of Muslim workers are “regular”
salaried workers than for other communities – though that is because a high
proportion of Muslims is self-employed. A smaller proportion is employed in
large enterprises, government as well as private. A corollary is that fewer of
them have a written contract or get social security benefits.
From this the
government is likely to infer that Muslims are discriminated against in regular
jobs, and to be tempted to reserve jobs for them. I think that would be a
mistake based on misdiagnosis. The basic disadvantages of Muslims are specialization
in declining industries, poor education and fluency in a language with no
economic value. In my view, the government should put the money it spends on
sending people on Haj into the modernization and diversification of the
industries Muslims are specialized in – fabrics, leather, tobacco, auto repair
and electricals. And Muslims should start writing Urdu in Devanagari script.
Millions of Muslims in the north are going to Hindi schools anyway; they should
actively hybridize Hindi and convert Hindi speakers to Hindustani. They would
be thereby be doing a favour to the Hindi speakers.
But if they want
to do themselves a favour, they should go straight over to English. Minority
Muslim English medium schools, if well run, will attract students from all
communities. That should be the next industry for Muslims to go into.
