The Sachar report: A flawed number game

By Nitish Sengupta

The Sachar Committee Report, an often-quoted 404-page document, is

disappointing, both in its method of analysis and in the way it has collected and
presented some dubious statistics. A fundamental fact that has been ignored is
that almost 95 per cent of elite Muslims in India, who largely depended on jobs,
went over to Pakistan after Partition. Those who stayed back in India were, by
and large, the rural community, the self-employed and the service providers. A
great majority of them, under the influence of powerful mullahs, kept away from
modern education and, in consequence, modern jobs and professions. Thus, the
figures for Muslim percentage in government jobs practically started from a zero
base. This point should have been mentioned in the report’s overall analysis. Its
omission is a serious statistical error.

Then again, the Committee conveniently ignored the fact that the social and
economic position of a community does not necessarily depend on the jobs that
its members hold in the government or the organised sector. If that had been the
case, I am afraid the position of Parsees, to take one example, would be
extremely backward. The Sachar Committee’s Report completely ignored that
there is a much larger number of self-employed people, tradesmen and service
providers among the Muslims who do not seek government jobs.

Another area where it has gone completely wrong is in creating an impression

that India’s entire educational and economic system has gone out of its way to
exclude Muslims. Whereas, in actual fact, we have all gone out of our way to give
placement to them wherever they merit selection. There are indeed, some very
serious errors, on the statistical front.

Prof A.R. Hashim has pointed out that in looking at the position of Hindus in
general, the Sachar Committee first excluded the Scheduled Castes and Dalits
from the general Hindu community and then compared them with the Muslim
community. The Committee also pointed out that the position of the Scheduled
Castes and Dalits is little or no different from that of the Muslim community. To
exclude such a big chunk from the Hindu community and thereafter compare the
residual Hindu community with the Muslims is a serious oversight.

Another Muslim scholar, Prof Imtiaz Hussain, also trashed the report on the
ground that it ignored the status of Muslims in terms of jobs held in all the South
Indian states and others like Gujarat and West Bengal. He pointed out that in all
the southern states the Muslims are much better off than what the Sachar Report
has made them to be. He questioned the statistics presented by the Sachar
Committee in relation to the Census data which shows that the Muslims are
better off in several states.
Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee, chief minister of West Bengal, has pointed out that
the report ignores the Muslim peasantry who benefited from the state’s land
reforms programme. Insofar as the organised private sector is concerned, one
point which has escaped the Committee’s attention is that many of our business
organisations are still dominated by the caste system. Consequently, a company
dominated by banias generally looks out for banias. In that process too Muslims
and minorities suffer as much as people belonging to other Hindu castes. This
need not necessarily be an anti-Muslim bias.

Clearly, Justice Sachar simply chose to ignore available evidence to make out
that the Muslim community is not doing any better than the other communities.
He should have taken into account examples like Azim Premji, chairman of
Wipro, the richest corporate Indian, Habil Khorakiwala of Wockhardt, the Cipla
group, or for that matter, people like Habib Rahman, chairman ITC Hotels, Israt
Hussain, a top associate of Ratan Tata, and many others. He should also have
objectively made a community-wise analysis of the employees of such successful
enterprises as Azim Premji’s Wipro. Is merit their main criterion for recruitment?
Does this amount to discrimination and anti-Muslim bias? Or do successful
Muslim industrialists reserve jobs for fellow Muslims irrespective of their merit?

I also wish the Sachar Committee had taken into account the brass
manufacturers and traders of Moradabad, the glass workers of Ferozabad, the
textile operators of Bhiwandi, the carpet makers of Kashmir and the Zari workers
of Varanasi. Sadly, these people do not find any mention in the Sachar Report
which chose to concentrate only on certain levels of government jobs and worked
out the position of Muslims only on that account.

That is not all. The Committee has not taken into account the overwhelming
eminent position occupied by Muslims in Bollywood, including the fact that almost
50 per cent of top actors and actresses are Muslims, if not more. Does that
smack of discrimination?

It remains a mystery as to why the government did not think it appropriate to

assign this work to the National Minorities Commission or even to its own
department of minority affairs and, instead, chose to appoint a separate
committee. Equally mysterious is the fact that without choosing to discuss this
matter in the country’s sovereign Parliament or allowing an informal debate, the
government has announced that it has accepted all the recommendations of the
Sachar Committee.

Neither the government nor the Indian nation at large deserves the accusation by
the Sachar Committee that they have been anti-Muslim all along. Indian Muslims
occupy a pride of place in our democracy, and Gujarat (2002) and Babri Masjid
(1992) are exceptions, not the rule.
Taken all together, one has to come to the sad conclusion that the Committee
has erred both in its analysis and its conclusions. Mr Justice Rajinder Sachar has
been a very respected friend for many years. But I am afraid, in this report he has
side stepped from the position of a judge and taken on the rule of a lawyer who
was assigned a certain brief and went on to collect evidence which suited that
brief.

Dr Nitish Sengupta, an academic and an author, is a former Member of

Parliament and a former secretary to the Government of India