In connection with the report “Poor socio-economic infrastructure cause for Muslims' backwardness: ICSSR survey” (The Hindu, June 23, 2010), Javeed Alam, Chairman, Indian Council of Social Science Research (ICSSR), New Delhi, writes:
Your correspondent met me on June 22, 2010 on the sidelines of a seminar at ISEC [Institute for Social and Economic Change], Bengaluru. The stated purpose of the interview was to understand the functioning and activities of the ICSSR for the Education Supplement of The Hindu .
After the interview, the correspondent asked me if we do research for the Government of India. I gave the instance of the survey we had conducted for the Ministry of Minority Affairs on the 90 Muslim concentrated districts. He wanted to know what had come out of the survey and I mentioned in passing that some of the common things that have come out were a relative lack of infrastructure development, bad implementation of the Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS) scheme and reluctance of banks to give loans to Muslims. That was the end of the interview.
I did not say even one word about these being the reason for Muslim backwardness, nor any other factor, as the report states. I did not speak about causes or connections between one and the other factors. The correspondent has used his imagination and attributed all of these to me, e.g., the report was submitted to Shri Antulay, and not Shri Khursheed.
