Budgetary Allocation Cut for Muslims Has Reached the Choking Point
By Syed Ali Mujtaba, New Age Islam
14 August 2024
Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman announced the Union
Budget 2024-25 in the parliament on July 23. In this the budgetary allocation
for the ministry of minority affairs has been reduced from ₹5,000 crore to ₹3,000 crore.
This is significant news for the Indian Muslim because they
require more budgetary allocation for their overall development. An alarm has
to be raised, where the Muslim game is heading in India?
There are certain
facts that have to be brought into limelight by quoting the government sources
and posing the question why budgetary cuts have been targeting the Muslim
community.
The Periodic Labour Force Survey (PLFS) data tells us that
from 2018-19 to 2022-23, only 29% of Muslims aged between 15 and 24 years have
access to education, compared to 44% of Scheduled Castes, 51% of Hindu OBCs,
and 59% of Hindu upper castes.
In higher education, Muslim enrollment is just 5%.” Muslims
have the lowest representation in regular wage employment at 15%, and the
highest in casual labour at 26%.
In November 2022, the Narendra Modi government announced
that it was discontinuing the five-year fellowship, which was launched in 2009
to provide financial assistance to students pursuing higher education citing an
overlap of various other central schemes.
The PM had promised one crore (minority) scholarships but
only 58% have been delivered so far. The cut in budgetary allocation to the
minorities would make this provision impossible to be implemented.
Earlier Congress had drawn up a plan to spend 15% of the
Union Budget exclusively on Muslims but that had to be shelved after strong
opposition from the BJP.
Similarly, in many non BJP ruled state 4 % quota is allotted
to the Muslims under the OBC category.
The identity politics of depriving Indian Muslims has
reached the choking point. Why can't the government do a caste survey of the
Muslim community and bring a list of caste categories who are a deprived
section of the society. They can identify the deprived caste category among the
Muslim community and allocate funds for their upliftment.
A big Pandora box has been opened by the Supreme Court, when
it has asked the government to identify sub-castes within the Schedule caste
and give them developmental assistance. However, there is not a word said about
giving any assistance to Muslims who have converted to Islam from the category
of Schedule caste. The Sachar Commission has given this recommendation saying
that the same affirmative action should be given to the Muslims, because
changing religious faith does not change their socio and economic status.
The government however has a different game plan. Its actual
motive is to target the Muslim community beyond bearable limits so that this
community permanently vanishes from India.
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Syed Ali
Mujtaba is a journalist based in Chennai
URL: https://www.newageislam.com/current-affairs/budgetary-allocation-muslims-choking-point/d/132936
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