Thank you TOI for the report

Day: Sunday, 11-July-2010
Paper: Times of India (mumbai edition)
Page Number: 20

I do not have the habit of reading newspaper especially the Times of India for its myopic reporting of stories of national and human interest. Often I treated this newspaper as yet another form of soap operas that come out of Balaji Telefilms production house.
Today, I happen to lay my hand on TOI since ET & HINDU were not available due to reasons unknown. Interestingly I found an article on page number 20 of this newspaper's mumbai edition.
The heading goes this way

MEET THE MUPPIES^*

But young Muslims are increasingly upwardly mobile and embracing aspiration and achievement

ONLY 5% GOVERNMENT EMPLOYEES ARE MUSLIM JUST 3% ARE IAS & IPS OFFICERS 99% HAVE MINOR JOBS IN THE RAILWAYS

I looked into the word web to find out the meaning of Muppies but it didn't help me out. So I ignored the word and an asterik besides it. The next two sentences quoted above are the matter of interest to me. Let me go through the second sentence first.

The second sentence says, only 5% govt employees are muslims, 3% are IAS, IPS officers. Considering that Muslims constitute 15-17% of Indian population and are growing steadily in number, the above figures are shocking.
In quest of reasons that led to such a sorrow situation of Indian Muslims, I bumped into a Sachar Committe Report of 2006 which was tabled in Lok Sabha. I am not sure what happened to it after it was submitted, but there are some interesting findings.

1. 25 per cent of Muslim children in the 6-14 year age group have either never attended school or have dropped out.

2. Drop out rates among Muslims are higher at the level of primary, middle and higher secondary.

3. Only 3% of Muslim children among the school going age go to Madarsas. Still the media calls few cities "Atankgarh".

4. The average amount of bank loan disbursed to the Muslims is 2/3 of the amount disbursed to other minorities. In some cases it is half.

5. The presence of Muslims has been found to be only 3% in the IAS, 1.8% in the IFS and 4% in the IPS.

6. There are about 5 lakh registered Wakfs with 6 lakh acre land and Rs 6,000 crore book value. But the gross income from all these properties is only 163 crores i.e. 2.7%.

Reasons for such a state:

1. Majority of Indian Muslims constitute lower strata of society who are either self employed or work at a very low level. Their income levels doesn't help them get past of couple of meals per day. If that is the case, how can they think of sending their children to school?

2. Muslims who work as butchers, rickshaw pullers, masons, cobblers, barbers etc are considered in General Category where as non-muslims belonging to similar profession are considered SC, ST, BC and they enjoy the benefits of reservation provided to them.

3. Those muslims who are successful Engineers, Doctors, lawyers etc try to distance themselves from words like Islam, Terrorism, Madrasas, Fatwa, Fundamentalism etc. No one comes forward to clarify the doubts that the entire world associates with these words. In turn, these
people are jeopardizing the future of all those poor muslims who are fighting for their survival.

4. Now comes our esteemed politicians. Whenever I think of Muslim politicians, I remember role of a muslim politician played in the movie DEV. In the movie, post riot, he discourages muslims to file a complaint in PS stating reasons of pride, self respect. In turn he misleads them for his selfish motives. Similar is the case with real time politicians.

For eg, Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen of Hyderabad is approx 4 decade old party has been winning consistently from this constituency but there are no developments. The roads and traffic around Charminar is still chaotic. Old City still gets water once in two days. The drainage system overflows with a marginal rain. Still people vote for them because they were told that if MIM doesn't win, BJP will win.

5. Majority of Wakf properties are sold to Corporates and Land Mafia and so they are not able to benefit muslims. It is alleged that some of the wakf properties of Hyderabad in Gachibowli were given to Infosys, ISB, Wipro and Microsoft. A case was in progress in AP high Court when
heard last.

Amidst all these disturbing incidents, it is refreshing to see these kind of articles which focus on the positive side of Indian Muslims. Such articles also clear the air showing that Indian Muslims wants to break out of the stereotypes that they were forced into and want to be part of inclusive growth that India is witnessing. The attitudinal change that has come in the muslim youth is very nominal. A lot more needs to be done without compromising on the basics of Islam.

Finally, my name is Mohammed Khalid and I am an Indian Muslim.
JAI HIND