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New Delhi: The Sonia
Gandhi-led National Advisory Council (NAC) has asked the
government to focus on welfare of minorities in the 12th Five Year
Plan (2012-13 to 2016-17), a recommendation that comes ahead of
the assembly polls in five states in January-February.
The move follows the government's December 2011 move to approve a
4.5 percent sub-quota for minorities within the existing 27.5
percent quota for the other backward classes in central jobs and
admission to central educational institutions.
Punjab, Uttar Pradesh, Manipur, Goa and Uttarakhand will elect new
assemblies in the upcoming polls.
India's designated religious minorities, as per the National
Commission for Minorities Act 1992, constitute about 18.4 percent
of the total population and number around 189.5 million according
to Census 2001.
The largest among these, the Muslims, form 72.8 percent of the
minority population. They form around 13.4 percent of the total
population and number nearly 140 million.
In its latest recommendation to the central government, the
advisory body said providing basic services like drinking water
and sanitation in all minority settlements should be obligatory
for the government.
"This assurance of basic services should be demand-driven, in that
the appropriate government would be obliged to provide these
services, on demand from any settlement, within a specified time
frame, using central funds," said the NAC communication.
To ensure that public money was utilised properly, the advisory
body asked the government to operationalise an assessment and
monitoring agency under the Planning Commission urgently, which
will include experts, academics and civil society members.
Citing the Justice Rajinder Sachar panel report, which examined
the social condition of Muslims and was tabled in parliament in
2006, the NAC noted these communities suffer from socio-economic
deprivation and gross inequality.
The report said there was considerable exclusion of the largest
minority (Muslims) from India's progress on key development
indicators since independence.
Observing that previous five Plans were not able to intervene
adequately in development of religious minorities, mainly due to
absence of demographic data, the NAC asked the government to
collect such records.
Offering solutions to the problem, the NAC suggested the scale of
government interventions must be large enough to make a dent into
the numbers of the marginalised.
Noting that the design and implementation structures of the
programmes do not often target minority settlements and people
directly and effectively, the NAC suggested mandatory social
audits of the multi-sectoral development programmes of the
minorities welfare ministry and the prime minister's new 15-point
programme for their uplift.
(Amit Agnihotri can be contacted at amit.a@ians.in)
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