Jairam Ramesh differs on Sachar Panel findings

Jairam Ramesh says the panel reflects the plight of Muslims of northern India, reports Chetan Chauhan.

Published on: Feb 10, 2007, 18:02:00 IST

None | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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There is someone in the government who does not agree with the findings of the Sachar panel report on Muslims in totality.

Minister of State for Commerce Jairam Ramesh on Saturday said the panel reflects the plight of Muslims of northern India. "Muslims in southern India are much better off and in many cases even better than Hindus in northern India," he said, giving example of Muslims women in Tamil Nadu having lower fertility rate than Hindu women in northern parts of the country. "What Sachar panel says is not correct for Muslims in Karnataka or Kerala," he said.

He aired his views at the valedictory function of a daylong seminar on Muslim women organised by Justice Sunanda Bhandare Foundation, All India Democratic Women’s Association and The Guild of Service.

Instead of treating it as a problem of Muslims, he advocated that the issue should be treated as a malaise of northern India. This, according to him, will help in building political consensus and having a more effective strategy to tackle the problem. "The strategy can bring in a change in policies of state and the centre," he said.

Ramesh also differed with the government on allocating 15 per cent of government resources for upliftment of Muslims. "It may not be possible. Already dalits are asking for 22 per cent. Then, Scheduled Tribes will seek seven percent and then Yadavs and others and it will go on," he said.

Rather than looking at resource allocation, the government should select 50 Muslim dominated districts for priority development, he suggested. Immediately, Suhasini Ali of CPIM reacted strongly by saying that you want to allocate 50 per cent of funds for the rich. A charge refuted by Ramesh.

The convention also adopted resolutions proposed by Murlidhar Bhandare and Mohini Giri for upliftment of Muslims in area of education, health, employment and economy.

E-mail Chetan Chauhan: chetan @hindustantimes.com

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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