Quota for Minorities

The Ranganath Misra Commission, whose report was tabled in Parliament last week, has recommended 15 per cent reservation for all religious minorities in government jobs, education and welfare schemes, of which 10 per cent is meant for Muslims — the largest religious minority in the country. That the recommendation for quotas strictly on the basis of religion militates against the tenet of a secular democracy, cannot be overlooked. It is downright obsolete. As a leading commentator from the Muslim community, Firoz Bakht Ahmed, has rightly pointed out in a piece that this newspaper carried yesterday, ‘‘Be it Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes, Other Backward Classes, Muslim Dalits or other so-called minorities for that matter, reservations are a menace for the entire system... Reservations will not help Muslims. Rather they must tell the government to open more schools in their areas than police stations... The oppressed and the marginalized need expansion of opportunities rather than favours from the state...’’ However, such sane suggestions fall on the deaf ears of a government reluctant to do away with the quota system that only perpetuates backwardness. After all, such quotas are great electoral tools, and when it comes to quotas for Muslims as proposed, they are a great ‘secular’ means too. Had the government worked on expansion of opportunities instead of being so obsessed with quotas (that too not on the basis of economic criteria), the target groups would have by now been a very empowered section. THE SENTINEL