Muslims fare better than Hindus

Muslims fare better than a majority Hindus in eight states though the overall literacy rate among Muslims is lowest in the country, reports Chetan Chauhan.

Published on: Dec 28, 2006, 22:29:00 IST

None | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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Former JNU professor Mahendra K Premi said, "It seems that the level of economic and social development of the state is not the only important factor in Muslim literacy rates but it is the tradition of sending children to school or not."

Literacy among Muslims is not as bas as portrayed by Sachar Panel.

Muslims fare better than a majority Hindus in eight states though the overall literacy rate among Muslims is lowest in the country as compared to other communities.

It is above 80 per cent in Kerala, Chattisgarh, Tamil Nadu, Maharashtra and Gujarat. In Chattisgarh the Muslim literacy rate was 90.5 per cent as compared to 76.8 per cent for Hindus. In Gujarat Muslim men fared better than Hindus with 82.9 per cent literacy as compared to 79.1 per cent for the majority community.

For Muslim women, the high literacy rate of about 70 per cent was recorded in Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Maharashtra and Chattisgarh.

However, Sachar Panel had said such figures can be deceptive and can hide the low levels of attainment among specific groups. "Important dimension of human development (like literacy) should not be analysed only at the state level," the report said.

It is, therefore, necessary to undertake disaggregated analysis at appropriate levels.

The overall literacy rate of the country as per the 2001 Census is about 65 per cent.

At the national level, both Muslim men and women have the poorest literacy rates of 67.6 per cent and 50.1 per cent respectively.

Though in the overall literacy picture, Muslims are better than SC/STs but the reserved categories are doing better than them in the 6-15 age group.

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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