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Panel commissions study on non-Muslim minorities

Special Correspondent

NEW DELHI: Faced with a dearth of information on the socio-economic and educational status of non-Muslim minorities, the National Commission for Minorities (NCM) has commissioned a study to plug the gaps and see how the other minority communities compare with one another and the majority community.

Patterned though on the lines of the Sachar Committee Report on the social, economic and educational status of Muslims, the NCM-authorised study by the Delhi-based Institute for Human Development (IHD) is modest in scope, using data from the Census and the National Sample Survey Organisation to draw conclusions.

Taking a leaf out of Sachar’s book and inspired by its spin-offs, the NCM decided that it would be worth the effort to commission a similar study on the status of non-Muslim minorities who often complain of being ignored. “They do not protest, in the way the Bharatiya Janata Party does, the attention that goes to Muslims, but there is a feeling that the largest minority community hogs all the attention at the cost of others,” said an NCM official.

Eager to take the discourse on minorities away from the contentious issues of identity, personal law and communal violence, the NCM study seeks to look at the socio-economic development of the non-Muslim minorities in the hope that together with the Sachar report it could provide a body of evidence on the status of minorities.

The IHD — headed by the former Union Minister Y.K. Alagh — has submitted the report and it is likely to be discussed by the Commission at its meeting in May before it is formally adopted.

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