as the Muslim deprivation level in economic, social and human development has reached to alarming proportion in the State and there is not a single positive aspect to mention about it’, observed noted economist and former member secretary of the PM’s High Powered Committee on Muslims aka Sachar committee, Dr Abusaleh Sharif.
Delivering a special lecture on ‘Relative Development of West Bengal and Socio- Religious Differentials’ under the aegis of Institute of Objective Studies, he said 10 per cent OBC quota for the community announced by the Left Front government in the State government jobs was nothing but a chimera as this would be given out of the existing seven per cent quota of OBC.
Highlighting every bit of the social indices with help of power-point presentation, he said West Bengal was the second state after Gujarat which even did not distribute a single pre-matric scholarship to minority students. Its record in implementing the three flagship schemes of the Minority Welfare Ministry is abject dismal. ‘12 districts of the state have been marked as Minority Concentrated Districts and a sum of Rs 55, 257 million was earmarked the Multi- Sectoral Development Programm (MSDP) for these districts but the Left government spent mere six per cent of the allotted fund.
Exposing the real face of the Left Front, which has been power for more than 34 years, he said the community was pushed into deep morass of poverty as empirical evidence proved that relative to other states and relative to other communities, the Muslims in West Bengal were facing high levels of deprivation and discrimination. Muslims account more than 25 per cent of the state population but their share in the government job is mere 2.1 per cent. Even in Gujarat Muslims are a better lot than their counterparts in West Bengal as their share in government jobs is 5.4 per who account just 9.1 per cent of the Gujarat total population.
There is substantial discrimination in the filed of education as data suggest that only 50 per cent Muslim children enrolled for the primary education in the state compared with the high castes 80 per cent. This gap further goes to widen at middle and matriculation level as only 26 and 12 per cent Muslim students reached to that level respectively where it is 58 and 38 per cent for Hindus respectively. Denying access even to basic education will be human development disaster, Dr Abusaleh said. Unlike other parts of the country, West Bengal Muslims have rural bias as 85 per cent of them reside in rural areas. He pointed out that overall villages with large Muslim population have poor physical and social infrastructure. A whopping 1,000 Muslim- concentrated villages have no any educational institutions and most of them are without medical facilities.
Dr Abusaleh, who also chief economist with the National Council for Applied Economic, touched upon every sphere of the life concerning the community and has said the all Muslims in West Bengal are OBCs and therefore, there must be at least 20 per cent separate quota for the community- not as a percentage to OBC allocation. On reply to a question, he said it was factually not correct that backwardness of the community due to the migration of cream of Muslims to Pakistan. “It is a lie as some 50,000 and 5,000 Muslims from Delhi and Lucknow and some other places migrated”, he added.
He also exposed the much-hyped FDI coming to Gujarat. Quoting the official figures, he said only Maharashtra, Karnataka and corridor in the National Capital Region is attracting the FDI whereas, Gujarat FDI story is a big lie.
In his presidential remarks, Dr Manzoor Alam said Muslims in Bihar taught a lesson to RJD which did not do anything for the Muslims despite ruling the state for 15 years and same can be happened in West Bengal as Muslims voted the Left Front to power 34 years in the back-drop continuous communal violence in the state.