AMU alumni meet FinMin officials over ‘very low budgetary allocations’ for minorities’ welfare: India

New Delhi:

A team of AMU alumni met Finance Ministry officials over very low budgetary allocations’ for minorities’ welfare schemes.

A team led by Parwez Mohammad, with Mohammad Aslam and Minnat Rahmani had a written a letter to Finance Minister P Chidambaram on 5 March, 2013 to discuss the low budgetary allocations in the FY 2013 – 2014 for Minority Indians within the current economic space.

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Ministry of Finance had taken cognizance of this letter and directed the Finance Secretary R S Gujral and Budget Director NM Jha to call a meeting and discuss this issue in detail.

This meeting was called on 3 March, 2013 in the North Block within the Finance Ministry, where detail discussion took place on “allocation of minuscule amount of budget for the FY 2013 – 2014 for the welfare of minorities,” who constitute around 14% of the national population.

The allocation of Rs 3,511 Crore for the Ministry of Minority Affairs in the Union Budget FY 2013-14 is not nearly enough, the government should raise it to Rs 50,000 Crore, the visiting representatives emphasized.

The budget has allocated Rs 35000 Crore for Scheduled Castes and Rs 24000 Crore for Scheduled Tribes, who constitute 16% and 8% respectively of the national population and while the minorities who are at least 14% of the national population have been given just Rs 3511 Crore.

The allocations of budget for minorities on the lines of SC and ST, because minorities particularly Muslims are more backward than SC and ST on socio-economic and educational fronts as per data of prime minister’s constituted report of Justice Sachar Committee Report, they argued.

The allocation of budget based on the backwardness index of Muslim population on the line of Karnataka was discussed. According to the representatives present, the Ministry of Finance has agreed that they don’t have any data driven model based on which the budget for the most backward communities can be raised and justified to the tax payers in general. If the convincing data bank is created then that will be helpful for sensitization about the minority socio-economic backwardness at the national level and there must be an effective data bank can be started, they reiterated.

Parwez Mohammad said, “This token budget is not going to help the minorities any way and instead this will further help to polarize the population on the communal lines. The government of India should come out with a clearly laid out procedure to study the comparative backwardness index of the different communities and different layers within each communities so that the effective budgetary allocations can be given without fear and favors and above the vote bank politics.”

They added that the methodologies used in preparing the Sachar Committee Report can be used for the comparative study for 10 year and can be used as a base-line to plan the budget for the next 10 years.

The issues of the effective utilization of the budget were also discussed in detail. The Finance Ministry has suggested creating capacity planning within the Ministry of Minority Affairs by increasing the quality head count because at the moment the number of the quality manpower is not enough within minority ministry to effectively utilize the budget.

Non co-operations by several state governments, district administration and block-level officials, apparently because of institutional bias, was also discussed. They demanded that if there is non-utilization of funds means for minorities in any state that should be made available to the media.

The issue of financial inclusion of Muslims was also discussed as without faith based access for Muslims to mainstream financial sector, India’s inclusive growth is not possible.

The representatives also demanded for the constitution of a working group to identify the hurdles for financial inclusion of Indian Muslims and suggest remedial measures in this regard and ministry should release an approach paper for a wider consultations.

Parwez Mohammad told TCN that they were not fully satisfied with the responses of the Finance Ministry officials and has hence demanded a meeting with the Finance Minister, as “this issue can only be tackled at the strategic level and can be initiative by top policy makers at the level of Finance Minister, with the support of other cabinet ministers and Prime Minister.”

They hence plan to have a “sustained campaign for the welfare of the community on secular lines and not be misled by tokenism.”

(Those interested in joining the campaign for sustained pressure on the government can contact Parwez Mohammad at parwez.mohammad@gmail.com or 9899613568.)

source: http://www.twocircles.net / Home> Indian Muslim / by Staff Reporter / March 25th, 2013

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