The Prime Minister seems to forget that it was during the NDA rule that a conscious programme was launched where artisans at grass roots level-like motor mechanics-were sought to be located and given training to upgrade their skills. Most beneficiaries would have been Muslims.

I am writing this before the UP election results are announced. There is no doubt that the fragmentation in the society that all these methods have glorified, will reflect itself in the form of hung Assembly with no clear majority for anyone, as the exit polls are predicting.

Any democratic regime cannot ignore the three or four crore poor among Muslims; nor can it sideline the other 20 and odd crore poor among Hindus and give priority to the rest in deployment of resources. The art of governance lies in ensuring that both, and in fact all the 26 crore BPL people are raised above poverty line.

Last Sunday's newspapers carried two items with the contradictory headlines. One quoted Prime Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh as calling for "keeping religion out of politics". Another quoted the same Dr. Singh as asking the civil servants "to be sensitive to minorities' issues". Of course, to be fair to Dr. Singh, in the exhortation to civil servants minorities appears along with weaker sections like scheduled castes, scheduled tribes and women. But remembering what Dr. Singh told the National Development Council months back about Muslims having first charges on development funds, the headlines was not far wrong from his real intentions.

It beats any rational person how one can keep religion out of politics and at the same time make the government sensitive to "minorities", that really means people belonging to a specific religion. If one is sensitive to one among the many religions in the country, naturally this cannot but affect politics also. Since the Prime Minister quoted copiously from the Constitution in the first speech and insisted that religion should be kept out of politics, we must presume that what he wants is for government and political parties to follow the Constitution, which surely means to treat every citizen as equal.

Who can quarrel with such a proposition? The whole problem arises when some religious communities are sought to be given preferential treatment in the name of minority sensitivity. It is the same thing as caste. Religion or caste, once this enters the criteria for any political considerations or administrative decisions, then the country gets divided among religious or caste lines. It wont be long before the entire political spectrum is infected with this view and there is a competitive appeasement. In the present elections in UP, this competitive appeasement was witnessed on a large scale among the Congress, the SP and the BSP.

What this virus ultimately leads to is to give secondary importance to human rights and let religious bigots play upon the minority syndrome and its slogan of "religion in danger". Slogans like "Muslims are not getting jobs". "Muslims remain poor", etc., gain an emotive appeal and political leaders find it easy to congeal this situation and then exploit it. Nobody speaks of the fact that 26 per cent of Indians - Hindus, Muslims or anyone else - are poor. That number works out to 26 crores roughly. Surely, there are many crores of Muslims among them, just as there are many more crores of Hindus, numerically also; it is the latter that are more in bulk. Any democratic regime cannot ignore the three or four crore poor among Muslims; nor can it sideline the other 20 and odd crore poor among Hindus and give priority to the rest in deployment of resources. The art of governance lies in ensuring that both, and in fact all the 26 crores BPL people are raised above poverty line.

Then we have yet another survey that says that Muslims are better off compared to Hindus in certain areas like artisans. That again leads to economic issues nor being considered economically but exploited politically.

In all these debates, no body asks the key questions: are some people denied development funds because they are Muslims? Are they denied access to education because they belong to a certain community? Is their lack of education due to some internal problems? The political class does not want to tell them about their internal deficiencies. The political class does not promise that we shall have institutional arrangements where any grievance of discrimination on grounds of religion would be heard and redressed within a time frame. This compounds the tragedy of poverty.

Modern economy requires modern education and scientific skills. If there are built-in biases against modernity, then exclusion from modern industry, modern business, profession etc., is imperative. No amount of infusion of funds could help if you refuse to learn science and mathematics and insist that your education would be confined to your religious text only or mostly. If some sects refuse to have polio drops on ground that it is against its scriptural texts, then that sect would have more incidence of polio as it has happened in some parts of UP. Why is the political class not talking about this obvious rejection of remedy that uses scriptural texts to perpetuate poverty and disease? To be fair to Muslims, such deficiencies are found among other sects also but in the latter the overwhelming influence of liberal opinion drowns the false cries of religion in danger.

This is evident in case you are a good artisan but lacks knowledge of most recent numerical tools. Or put it another way, a motor mechanic who can handle the Ambassador car need not necessarily be able to handle a Baleno or Cheverlet or Honda City, not even Maruti's mid size cars. If the mechanic refuses to believe that the days of Ambassador cars are gone and insists that he gets job as a motor mechanic, he would only end up with a whole lot of grievance against the world that has denied him his Ambassador. However, the syndrome in which political parties function is such that they would rather exploit that grievance than tell the mechanic that he should forget about Ambassador cars. The Prime Minister seems to forget that it was during the NDA regime that a conscious programme was launched where artisans at grass root level-like motor mechanics-were sought to be located and given training to upgrade their skills. Most beneficiaries would have been Muslims.

If the consideration being shown politically for the "minorities" were genuine, the Prime Minister should have asked the Sachar panel to find out how many areas of concentration of Muslims had schools and what was the record of these schools? But if you go by the situation in government run schools, their state of dilapidation is so universal that you can neither say it has anything to do with the community around. But what is the percentage of attendance in government schools located in largely Muslim areas? Why are the people who speak in the name of these minorities not analyse this state of affairs?

As in the case of religious minorities, so is the case with certain castes. The political class dare not speak the truth. What was the Constitutional position when the positive discrimination was introduced? Clearly it was meant as a temporary measure. Sixty years afterwards, it has become a privilege. No body dares to propose that it be given up or even modified. With the political class learning that extending reservations is a good vote catcher, has caught on this net as a means of keeping himself or herself in power. No caste leader would come forward and say that after 60 years of reservation, a time has come to drop some castes or classes out of such niche positions. Instead, reservations has become a political issue. And the beneficiaries see it not as a means of uplifting their own castes or communities but as a tool of ensuring their proper share in the power structure. Effectively, there would be never a move to drop reservations and the communities would continue to remain divided - if you are not to be identified with a specific community you lose all benefits from the government patronage train.

I am writing this before the UP election results are announced. There is no doubt that the fragmentation in the society that all these methods have glorified, will reflect itself in the form of hung Assembly with no clear majority for anyone, as the exit polls are predicting. In fact, after V.P. Singh's caste politics of 1990 no political party has got a majority by itself in Parliament; more so in UP and Bihar (including Jharkhand). Caste politics has become the proud of top political leaders. First the division was along communal lines; then it was along caste lines. The king is dead; long live the king.

Courtesy: www.organiser.org, May 6, 2007