New Delhi: The Ministry of Minority affairs has questioned the report by Post Sachar Evaluation Committee headed by Amitabh Kundu on certain crucial points. The Committee had been set up by the UPA government and it had submitted its report five months ago.
According to a report published in The Indian Express, the ministry has pointed out that the committee analysed the condition of merely Muslims rather than minorities.
“The report is based on secondary data of pre-2011-12 which was the formative stage for the ministry. Many programmes of ministry have been launched in 2012 and thereafter. Even some data has been used from pre 2007-08 period when ministry was not in existence, neither implementation of the Sachar Committee recommendations started. The report is confined to the analysis of various socio economic indicators for Muslims only and not to the minorities as a whole,” the ministry said in its comments.
In an internal document, the Ministry has said that most of the data used by the committee was from the formative stages of the ministry and some even predated it. It has also raised questions about the sample size, the lack of state inputs and the methodology adopted for the compilation of the report.
The Kundu committee was set up in August 2013 by then UPA government to look at the socio-economic and educational status of Muslims after the Sachar report of 2006 revealed their dire conditions, and the Ministry of Minority Affairs was set up to deal with it. The committee had been given an extension by the NDA government and submitted its report in September last year.
The Kundu committee report concluded that Muslims had been left out of both government jobs and the urbanisation wave, and the basic advantages of a better sex ratio and higher birth weight in the community were frittered away by lack of health facilities in areas dominated by them.
Speaking to the newspaper, Professor Kundu said that while it was true that the thrust of the report was on the condition of Muslims, it did analyse outcome indicators for other minority communities too.
"Our mandate was to see whether Sachar recommendations had been implemented or not, and since that report had dealt with Muslims as the most deprived socio economically vulnerable population, our thrust was on Muslims," he added.
He went on to say that secondary data from an government source, census data from 2001-11 was used.
Responding to the individual recommendations of the Kundu report, the ministry has said that the idea of a diversity index, equity framework etc are a matter of policy that would require a call to be taken by the government. On other issues such as lack of education, health, credit facilities etc, it has enumerated the schemes currently being run both by the Ministry of Minority Affairs and other ministries such as HRD and Health and Family Welfare.
The Kundu committee recommendations such as incentivising and promoting integrated housing and promoting health-seeking behaviour among Muslims have been dismissed as general recommendations that do not need any specific intervention from the ministry.
Ministry officials said they had circulated the committee's report to other ministries seeking their comments.
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