There is another aspect of the issue. With the Parliament having hardly a few Muslims, the likelihood of Muslim majority villages being adopted will remain quite low, unless there are special instructions to the MPs. There is hardly any reason to believe that such an instruction will be issues by PMO or NDA.
Narendra Modi, the Prime Minister of India, is an elitist in every respect despite his highly publicised chai-wala background. He wants smart cities, bullet trains and now special villages. He has asked every MP to adopt at least one village in his constituency: A noble idea on the surface; but an elitist again. Out of more than four hundred thousand villages in the country, about 750 villages will have a very special status. They will be the villages adopted by Prime Minister, ministers and MPs.
Till now, we know Jaipur, but son Jayapur, the Prime Minister's child among villages, will become more known that Jaipur. These elite villages will of course be surrounded by the ordinary villages. If you put the argument to the supporters of the idea, they will argue that the effect will percolate to nearby villages as well, exactly the argument put forward by the current economists that if there are super-rich in the country, this will have a trickling effect on the rest of the countrymen; they will also gain something.
So now, we should wait for a new phase in Indian economy where Economic Disparity will have a partner in Village-to-village-disparity. Disparity over disparity! What an economic and social model! But the media, which is for all practical reasons nothing but an extension of the corporate, will support the idea as revolutionary.
There is another aspect of the issue. With the Parliament having hardly a few Muslims, the likelihood of Muslim majority villages being adopted will remain quite low, unless there are special instructions to the MPs. There is hardly any reason to believe that such an instruction will be issues by PMO or NDA. Other parties will also not love to do it because BJP will immediately jump on feet declaring it "Appeasement of Muslims".
Again if you put this point to the protagonists of elite villages, they will give an argument similar to what they give when they are asked near total absence of Muslim MPs and MLAs in their ranks. They argue that the real thing is "Vikas" and the numbers are not important. The same argument will be put forward here: Rather than adopting Muslim majority villages, all the people of the adopted villages need to be included in "Vikas".
The truth remains that for one reason or the other, Muslims are kept away from the fruits of development, and still they are described as an "appeased" community. Nearly half of the Hindu population gets reservation on the ground of backwardness but no Muslims, except in a few states, are given reservation despite their sweeping backwardness.
The argument is: the constitution does not allow reservation on the basis of religion. Nobody asks them: does the Constitution allow denial on the basis of religion? Muslims of course have hardly any legal body to fight this in the court. They are too busy in keeping answering the allegations against them.
And of course, they – the Muslim MPs, Muslim Ministers, the parties claiming themselves to be "Secular" do not have the guts to ask the Prime Minister the question: What about MuslimVillages, Mr. Prime Minister!
[Dr Javed Jamil is a Delhi-based thinker and writer. He can be contacted at doctorforu123@yahoo.com]
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