| Published on 05-03-2008 In National | | Viewed 2046 times | | The new catch phrase of the BJP---Communal Budgeting! |
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| Written by
Girish Nikam | 
Is providing better access to education, funds, health among other such basic necessities to what we all know as one of the most deprived groups of people in this country, appeasement? Well, according to the BJP anything done for the cause of minority welfare is anathema. The BJP has now decided that the Budget presented by the Finance Minister P.Chidambaram, last week, is aimed at appeasing the minorities, and has decided to launch a campaign.
Communal budgeting, a term aimed at capturing the minds of the Hindus, the same way "Ram" and "pseudo-secularism", were used, is being employed to revive the Hindu vote bank. That the BJP was hell bent on attacking the "communal budgeting" was evident a couple of months back, when its most visible "Hindu" face today, Gujarat Chief Minister, Narendra Modi, openly took up cudgels with the Prime Minister at the National Development Council meeting, which was discussing the Eleventh Five year plan. Of course, Prime Minister Dr.Manmohan Singh snubbed Modi, saying that the plan was not aimed at dividing people, as the latter claims, but at providing better and equal access to resources for all the poor.
Having determined to make "communal budgeting" a chant, a tactic usually employed by the rightists all over to sell a twisted fact, BJP's leaders jumped on the bandwagon, within minutes of Chidambaram finishing his budget speech. The grounds prepared by Modi in December at the NDC, is now sought to be taken forward. It is nothing new, but the dangers of such divisive tactics can never be under-estimated.
For the party, which finds itself in tactical and strategic doldrums, without having been able to pick up any major issue to corner the UPA Government, it is now falling back to the issue, it was born for. To attack the minorities, which in BJP-RSS vocabulary largely means Muslims and some extent Christians? So anything done for the cause of the minorities, however deserving or necessary it may be is worth denigrating and also an opportunity to revive the Hindu vote bank. So it is now clear that the road to the next lok sabha elections is now going to be paved with such anti-minority slogans and tactics.
Having said that, why is Chidambaram's budget being dubbed as "communal budgeting"? What does it contain for the minorities?
* A multi-sectoral development plan for each of the 90 minority concentrated districts in the country, costing Rs.3,870 crore, over the next five years. The allocation under this for 2008-09 is just Rs.540 crore
* Increasing the allocation for the Ministry of Minority Affairs from Rs.500 to Rs.1,000 crore
* a pre-matric scholarship scheme of Rs.80 crore for 08-09
* scheme for modernizing madrassa education--- Rs.45.45 crore for 08-09
* opening branches of more public sector banks in minority concentrated districts
* more candidates of minority communities to be recruited in central para military forces.
* Rs.60 crore additional funds to enhance the corpus of the Maulana Azad education Foundation.
All of this does not even work out to Rs.1, 200 crore in terms of cash outflow from the state exchequer for the present year.
And is this Communal budgeting?
Is it the argument of the BJP that these allocations and programmes should not be taken up? Is it their argument that the minorities, whose pathetic conditions have been starkly presented in the Justice Rajinder Sachar committee, report, not deserving of even this extra attention to pull them up from the morass that they find themselves in?
Interestingly what was the strategy of the BJP-led NDA Government when it was in power between 1998 and 2004? A rather shocking fact emerged when one went through the seven budget speeches, including an interim budget, of the NDA Finance Ministers, Yeshwant Sinha and Jaswant Singh, through this period. Not once have either of the Ministers in their speeches, even mentioned the word "minorities". All through the NDA Government it was as if the "minorities" did not exist for the Government of India and inevitably in its planning process.
Is this what the BJP wants to be continued in this country? Do they think that by shutting the minorities out of the budget process, they will be able to provide them confidence, protection, and sense of inclusiveness among these sections? Even for a moment if one agrees with the BJP's arguments that by providing these separate allocations, the country is being further divided---- has their policy in their six and half years in power--- of their brand of treating "everyone equally", provided the results? Did the 16 to 18 percent minorities in this country feel that they had become part of the mainstream during those years? Or was any move made towards that end?
Now by coining this catchphrase, "communal budgeting", and making it their electoral chant, is the BJP trying to unite the country? Are these chants and catchphrases the way to bring the minorities to the mainstream and make them feel that they are part of the development process?
Just before ending lets look at some of the stark realities facing us as far as minorities are concerned, as spelt out in the Sachar report. 94.9 percent of Muslims living below poverty line in rural areas don't receive food grains. Only 3.2 percent of the Muslims receive subsidized loans. 54.6 percent of Muslims in villages and 60 percent in Urban areas have never been to schools, far below the national average of 40.8 percent and 19.9 percent respectively. There are many more disturbing statistics.
But going just by these figures which depict the utter backwardness of the community, don't they deserve to be pulled up? Is the Government committing a sin by adopting a targeted approach towards it? Is doing it "Communal budgeting"? Can India move forward and sustain its growth rate and its progress in various spheres, if this 16 percent of the population are allowed to rot? A question which Advani and his cohorts need to answer. And if they still insist, they should come out with a comprehensive alternate plan to ameliorate the suffering of this significant section of the population. Not just chant, "communal budgeting" and vitiate the atmosphere in the coming months, in the hope of creating and capturing the elusive and non-existent Hindu vote bank.
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