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Illiterate landless Muslims: the three levels of vulnerability
Submitted by admin on 12 August 2007 - 10:31am.
By Kashif-ul-huda, TwoCircles.net
A commission constituted by the UPA government suggests that Muslims in India face vulnerability in employment sector due to low level of education, having no land and being Muslim.
A Draft Report on “Conditions of Work and Promotion of Livelihoods in the Unorganised Sector” released by the National Commission for Enterprises in the Unorganised Sector (NCEUS) reveals low level of schooling and high rate of poverty among Muslims who are employed in organized or unorganized sectors. Muslims rank between OBCs and SCs for various indicators studied by the commission.
Commission termed as a “vulnerability” the socio-religious group the worker belonged to. The report notes that socially under-privileged groups get reservation for jobs and provisions for admission to higher education institution while Muslims who are “economically backward” have no such provision.
6.1 years of schooling is an average for non-agricultural worker. For workers belonging to scheduled tribes (ST) it is 3.8 years, lowest in this sector. Muslims workers rank just a bit higher at 4.1 years. Upper castes Hindu workers have the highest average schooling of 9 years.
The commission reports that “[t]he broad pattern in years of schooling remained the same among the socio-religious groups, rising from ST to upper casts [Hindus], with the Muslims being closer the SC.” This is same observation as Sachar Committee’s report which reported that the Muslims rank closer to SCs and STs as a group in various indicators.
The commission also found that “[w]hile upper caste men and women were most likely to get organised sector jobs, the Muslim men and women were least likely to do so.” For upper caste, this can be explained with high level of education and scheduled tribe and castes are helped by affirmative action, while Muslims without any affirmative action and low level of education are being left out from better paying organized sector jobs.
Casual work, which pays less and get fewer employment opportunity have highest proportion of ST men (26%) and women (22%) followed by SC. Muslims males (15.6%) and females (10.3%) are more or equal to OBCs. Upper caste Hindus are least likely to be casual worker.
Muslim males and females are overwhelmingly self-employed both in rural and urban areas. Lower levels of education and low level of land-holding was the likely cause for Muslims lower participation in employment in organized and unorganized sector, according to the report.
Employment is also linked to poverty, the commission found similar pattern as employment while observing poverty ratio. STs are the poorest group and “upper caste Hindus having the best status.” Suggesting that the labour market impacts the well-being of the workers.
Even in the same sector, ST and Muslims are most poor than other groups. Half of ST agricultural labourers are below the poverty line; poverty ratio of Muslim agricultural labourers is 40%. The high poverty ratio continues even when some of them own some land.
According to the report, workers from socially deprived groups and women are “employed as bonded labour, child labour, seasonal migrants, or suffering from various forms of social exclusion and discrimination” putting them at a disadvantage.
The report identifies three levels of vulnerability that comes in the way of getting a good employment. First level is created by “low levels of education”, second level of vulnerability is “poor access to land”. These two levels of vulnerability “denies access to “good jobs” in the organised sector and confined one to casual manual labour.” Socio-religious groups that the worker belonged to introduce the “third dimension of vulnerability.” ST and SC populations who have been discriminated for centuries are “protected by affirmative action” but for Muslims this third level of vulnerability forces them into “self-employed activities to meet their livelihood needs.” Higher education level could have made a difference for them in gaining more productive self-employment activities.
Created in 2004, under the chairmanship of Professor Arjun Sengupta, NCEUS under the Ministry of Small Scale Industries released its draft report for questions and comments.
The commission endorsed the recommendation of the Sachar committee for making an Equal Opportunities Commission.
Commission has suggested two bills to better regulate and enforce minimum condition for unorganised workers in agricultural and non-agricultural sectors.
Link:
NCEUS: official website
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On Unorganized sector
On Unorganized Sector Security Bill -07
-aariz.mohammed@gmail.com 10the August 2007
“Humanity’s darkest evil, the most destructive horror machine
among all the devices of men that is non-objective law.”
The proposed bills covering the workers of Agricultural workers and non-Agricultural workers is to address more than 350 millions of Indian population with most of them are deprived communities and more than 80% of the Muslim working population.
1. Mean Years of Schooling of Muslims in Non-Agriculture Category is less than the others including SC and STs as per figure 2.3.
2. Muslims share in Distribution of Un-organised Non-Agricultural Workers by Land Size Class is 75%, Which is higher than all other social Groups. As per figure 2.6.
3. Muslims Percentage of Workers in Non-Agriculture by Employment Status is 80%, as per figure 2.7.
It is unfortunate neither the leaders of Deprived communities including ‘Muslims’ nor the so-called progressive Parties of the country are not able to spare time on ‘Making Objective law / s’ as they are busy in keeping themselves in power. The fourth pillar of Democracy in India some how or other Prescribed to the philosophy, which denounces the ‘present Constitution’ and working with a zeal to invalidate it. The remaining majority of the population are illiterate often don’t understand the modalities of legal-language.
Law being the instrument of the State to disseminate Social Justice has to be drafted / enacted and interpreted with an objective to conserve the premise of the modern State. The Present bills to address the problems of deprived sections of society deserve more attention by the Social activists of these sections and the media as they have an obligation towards Democracy. Other than ‘The Economic Times ( Hyd Edition)’ [reported about this on 21st May 2007] there is no cognizable appearance of this issue in any of the print and electronic media till 6th of August 2007.
The efforts of ‘Twocircles.net’ has to be appreciated not because it is the first to focus this ( Net based ) but also to its attention on the issues of “Policy” having direct impact on ‘Deprived communities’ including Muslims. THE AGRICULTURAL WORKERS’ CONDITIONS OF WORK AND SOCIAL SECURITY BILL, 2007 and UNORGANISED NON-AGRICULTURAL WORKERS’ CONDITIONS OF WORK AND SOCIAL SECURITY BILL, 2007. Both are focused to provide ‘Social Security’ to these sections of people. Even prior to this, a volume of laws are enacted to deal with this issue. The draft report on “Conditions of Work and Promotion of Livelihoods in the Unorganised Sector April-2007” from Page 315 to 327 has given the reference of these laws and the outcome.
A critical approach of the reports posted in the http://nceus.gov.in/ncemain.htm will defiantly raise few questions:
1. Without Necessary Machinery how the government proposes to implement this? As the laws in force were failed because of this!
2. How can the ‘Panchayats’ meet the objective with out 100% implementation of 73rd and 74th Constitutional amendment? As most of the ‘States’ refuse to delegate the powers to this institutions “In Practice”!
Out of all the essentials to implement this, Government has to issue a Comprehensive ‘identity Card’, which not only serve the purpose of ‘Citizenship, voter identity, Pan, Bank, Pf, Esi, etc.,’ Considering the hard ships faced by the ‘Election Commission’ in issuing the ‘Voters identity Cards’ [ started a decade ago and yet to be completed ] this proposal itself is a utopia / appeasement / new method to rebut existing labor laws .
The Group of Ministers headed by Finance Minister responsible for this asked the labour ministry to re-draft the bill few months ago, yet the present bill is not categorical about the ‘finances’ and the ‘machinery’. Chapter IV of “NATIONAL SOCIAL SECURITY AND WELFARE FUND FOR UNORGANISED WORKERS” Chapter VI of “STATE SOCIAL SECURITY AND WELFARE BOARDS FOR UNORGANISED NON-AGRICULTURAL WORKERS”. More importantly it speaks about ‘Boards’, which from the previous experience are inactive / ineffective. There is neither a provision of ‘Corpus’ fund nor any ‘mandatory mechanism’ for transfer of the proposed ‘Grant’, ‘cess’, or ‘loan’ directly to the ‘head of the board’ it is left to the discretion of the ‘State’ by stating ‘State May’. This same Wording in Article 21[a] [which is talking about Free and compulsory education], in 73rd and 74th amendments [which are destined to empower local governance] made the amendments bungling. Other relevant sections of the ‘Bill’ are also defective.
The existing fund from various institutions in force relatively working with the same objective has to be transferred to these ‘Boards’, but the ‘Bill’ doesn’t indicate this.
The concept of ‘National Minimum Wage’ discussed from para 6.3 to 6.29 in fixing criteria for ‘Minimum wage’ is not scientific. The variations in the living conditions, ‘BPL’ line, ‘relative poverty’, Consumer price index and inflation has to be redefined in accordance human development indicators to fix the criteria for Minimum wage unlike the prescribed criteria in para 6.27. Each one of the concept itself is a vast subject in itself and needs a specialized focus of subject experts, but the Committees looked into these things is sort of that expertise.
a). The ‘Official Poverty-line’ itself is not factual / not even near to it as it is based upon 34years old consumption basket. It has become a travesty of the very idea of poverty line and the corresponding poverty estimates – the percentage of persons below these lines – have lost all meaning. ( UTSA PATNAIK see EPW July 28th 2007 page 3132- 3150 )
b). Lack of Objectivity in Poverty estimation is the one of the Conceptual fallacy in deciding the Minimum Wages carried out by Planning commission.
Note: The data referred in these [NCEUS] reports is of 55st round of NSSO, where as Sachar committee report based on 61st round of NSSO data. This indicates that the report is not based on new data provided either by census or by NSSO Estimate on the subject of comparing religious groups. Though 61st round of NSSO doesn’t have ‘Muslim’ religious Category, it was calculated by the ‘Sachar committee’, which the present NCEUS ignored to do.
These are the few things to be debated widely by the media and the elite of the ‘Deprived Communities. Rather than discussing emotional issues which doubly deprive them and make them more venerable to discrimination both legally and culturally. Lot of Space on print and electronic media was spent on ‘Sachar Committee Report’, Which was not referred by the Government to recommend any corrective measures to address the problems faced by the Indian Muslims’ on the other hand the ‘Commission’ which has the reference to recommend [Ranganath Misra Commission Report] the corrective measures was not given any space in MEDIA. This myopic view is the result of ‘delusion towards emotional issues’ distorting even the elite of these communities.
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