Quote of the Day March 3, 2021

 

“It's beauty that captures your attention; personality which captures your heart.”
Anonymous

“सौंदर्य आपके ध्यान को आकर्षित करता है, लेकिन व्यक्तित्व आपके दिल को आकर्षित करता है।”
अज्ञात

CSE’s State of Environment Report- Highlights

 The Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) has released its State of Environment Report, 2021 on February 25, 2021. The report highlighted how the Covid-19 pandemic will impact the children across world.

Key Findings

• The report highlighted that the pandemic will impact the 375 million children across the world.
• Children including from newborns to 14-year-olds will suffer long-lasting impacts.
• These children will be vulnerable to being underweight, stunting and increased child mortality.
• Their education and work productivity will also be impacted.
• As per the report, pandemic has forced over 500 million children out of school globally. Out of the total children, India accounted for more than half.
• The report further highlighted that; 115 million additional people might get pushed into extreme poverty due to pandemic. Most of the poorer people live in South Asia.

Where does India stand?

• As far as sustainable development is concerned, India ranked 117 among 192 nations.
• Further, India’s air, water and land have become more polluted in between the year 2009 and 2018.
• The Central Pollution Control Board highlighted that, out of 88 major industrial clusters in the country, 35 went through environmental degradation, 33 went through worsening air quality, 45 clusters comprised of polluted water and while 17 clusters had land pollution
• Tarapur in Maharashtra was the most polluted cluster.

What does data show?

The experts from the Centre for Science and Environment highlighted that the data shows that action has not been taken in the past three years control and reduce the pollution even in those areas that were already polluted.

Centre for Science and Environment (CSE)

CSE is a not-for-profit public interest research and advocacy organisation. It is based in New Delhi. The organisation was established in the year 1980. The organisation works on the poor planning, environment-development issues, climate shifts in India and advocate for policy changes & better implementation of existing policies.

Current Affairs – March 3, 2021

 

India

Lok Sabha TV & Rajya Sabha TV merged into one single entity

Parliament has merged the Lok Sabha TV and Rajya Sabha TV channels into one single entity called “Sansad TV”. Ravi Capoor, IAS, will be the CEO of the new joint entity for a period of one year. The services of Manoj Kumar Pandey, the CEO of Rajya Sabha TV, have been terminated.”

Nand Kumar Singh Chauhan, BJP Lok Sabha member from Khandwa (MP), dies

Nand Kumar Singh Chauhan, the BJP Lok Sabha member from Khandwa in Madhya Pradesh, died on March 2, 2021 at the age of 69. He was an MLA from 1985 to 1996. He was elected as the Lok Sabha member for the first time in 1996 and got re-elected in 1998, 1999, 2004, 2014 and 2019.

Union Minister Thaawar Chand Gehlot launches ‘Sugamya Bharat’ App

Minister for Social Justice and Empowerment Thaawar Chand Gehlot launched the ‘Sugamya Bharat’ App to ease accessibility issues faced by differently-abled in buildings and transport system. He also released a handbook titled ‘Access – The Photo Digest’ on March 2, 2021. The App and the handbook have been developed by the Department of Empowerment of Persons with Disabilities. The app will enable people with disabilities and even the elderly to register accessibility-related problems in buildings, in modes of transport or any infrastructure by uploading pictures on it.

Pokhriyal releases study material of Indian Knowledge Tradition courses of NIOS

Union Minister of Education Ramesh Pokhriyal ‘Nishank’ released the study material of Indian Knowledge Tradition courses of National Institute of Open Schooling (NIOS) in Noida, Uttar Pradesh on March 2, 2021. NIOS imparts school education through Open and Distance Education in the field of Secondary, Senior secondary level and vocational training. NIOS has prepared 15 courses of Indian knowledge tradition such as Veda, Yoga, Science, Vocational Skills and Sanskrit language subjects in Sanskrit, Hindi and English medium at all three levels of Open Basic Education Program. These courses are equivalent to classes 3rd, 5th and 8th.

Udaipur Science Centre inaugurated at Udaipur in Tripura

The Udaipur Science Centre, at Udaipur, Tripura was dedicated to the people by the Governor of Tripura, Ramesh Bais on February 28, 2021. Minister of State (Independent Charge) for Culture and Tourism, Govt. of India Prahlad Singh Patel, was the Chief Guest on the occasion. A. D. Choudhury, DG, NCSM informed that Udaipur Science Centre is the 22nd Science Centre which has been developed by NCSM (National Council of Science Museums).

Sri Lanka to develop West Container Terminal at Colombo Port with India, Japan

Sri Lanka on March 2, 2021 said it will develop the West Container Terminal (WCT) at the Colombo Port along with India and Japan. Approval has been granted to develop the WCT with investors nominated by India and Japan. While India has named Adani Ports, Japan is yet to respond. India and Japan will be accorded 85% stakes in WCT.

IAF participating in Exercise Desert Flag being hosted by UAE in March

The Indian Air Force will participate for the first time in Exercise Desert Flag which is beginning in Al-Dhafra air base in UAE from March 3, 2021. Exercise Desert Flag is an annual multinational large force employment warfare exercise hosted by the United Arab Emirates Air Force. The large-scale exercise ending on March 27 will provide the participating forces, including IAF, a unique opportunity to exchange knowledge, experience, enhance operational capabilities and interoperability.

Passenger train service between Dhaka & New Jalpaiguri to start from March 26

A new passenger train service between Dhaka and New Jalpaiguri is set to start from 26th of March marking the 50th Anniversary of the liberation of Bangladesh. The d train will run through the Chilahati-Haldibari cross border rail route. There are two passenger trains currently running between Bangladesh and India. The Maitree Express runs between Dhaka and Kolkata and Bandhan Express links Khulna with Kolkata.

Economy & Corporate

Cheque dishonour cases can’t be filed or continued against firms facing insolvency

The Supreme Court on March 1, 2021 held the cheque bounce cases can neither be instituted nor be continued against companies which are facing insolvency proceedings and are protected under a provision of Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code (IBC) putting a moratorium on legal proceedings against them.

PM inaugurates ‘Maritime India Summit 2021’

Prime Minister Narendra Modi inaugurated the three-day ‘Maritime India Summit 2021’ on March 2, 2021. According to the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO), the Maritime India Summit 2021 is being organised by the Ministry of Ports, Shipping and Waterways on a virtual platform www.maritimeindiasummit.in. The summit will visualise a roadmap for India’s Maritime sector for next decade and will work to propel India to the forefront of the Global Maritime Sector. Denmark is the partner country for the three-day summit.

World

Japan dismisses Chinese claims over Senkaku Islands

Japan on March 2, 2021 dismissed China’s claim over disputed Senkaku islands in the East China Sea, and criticized China saying the claim breaks international law. Japan’s Defense Minister Kishi Nobuo said that the Senkaku Islands are an inherent part of Japanese territory, in terms of history and international law. He said the islands are also under Japan’s control. China and Taiwan claim the Senkaku islands.

Vernon Jordan, U.S. civil rights activist and lawyer, dies aged 85

Vernon Jordan, who grew up in the segregated South to become an influential leader in the American civil rights movement, Washington politics and Wall Street, died at age of 85 on March 1, 2021.

Sports

Virat Kohli becomes first cricketer to have 100 million followers on Instagram

India captain Virat Kohli became the first cricketer in the world to have 100 million followers on social media platform Instagram. The 32-year-old Kohli is also the fourth most followed sportsperson on Instagram. Portugal football star Cristiano Ronaldo tops the chart with 265 million followers, ahead of Argentina football captain and FC Barcelona legend Lionel Messi and Brazil’s Neymar, who are second and third in the list with 186 million and 147 million followers respectively.

IIM-Udaipur invites applications for PG diploma in business administration for working executives

 IIM-Udaipur admissions 2021: The Indian Institute of Management (IIM-Udaipur) has invited applications for the post graduate diploma in business administration for working executives (PGDBAWE). Interested candidates can apply at iimu.ac.in. It was launched last year.

The programme aims to build strong fundamentals and leadership skills in areas of finance and marketing. The courses will be commenced in July, and classes are scheduled to be held on Saturday and Sunday.

The working professionals with the company’s financial arrangement or full/ part fee sponsorship can enroll in the programme. Director, IIM-Udaipur, Janat Shah said, “The Post Graduate Diploma in Business Administration for Working Executives is structured around career-advancement, leadership and strategy, and provides a well-rounded exposure to business management. The highlight of this weekend’s program is that the executives can upskill and live a campus-learning experience without a career break.”

Eligibility:

The candidates need to have an employer’s prior approval with a minimum of three years of work experience required. They should possess a minimum bachelor’s degree with valid GMAT/ GRE/ CAT scores. The candidates without a valid GMAT/ GRE score can appear in the institute’s admission test held on April 4, 2021.

For details, candidates can refer to the official website- iimu.ac.in.

Source: Indian Express, 2/03/21

The land of goddesses: Why Durga is key to understanding Bengal

 With state elections around the corner in West Bengal, a central argument made by the ruling TMC against the BJP is that the latter does not understand Bengal. This debate played out recently when BJP state president Dilip Ghosh, at a media event, commented on the ancestry of Lord Ram and that he was a ‘political icon’ and an ‘ideal man’ as opposed to Durga whose roots are unknown. The TMC picked on this remark to once again push the ‘outsider’ tag against the BJP.

Worship of the feminine form and in particular the celebration of Durga has deep historical roots in the Bengal region. Scholars of religion have pointed out that there existed a tradition of goddess worship in India, which predates the Vedic-Brahmanism tradition. This tradition was particularly long-lived and deeply rooted in some parts of the subcontinent like Bengal and Assam.

Over centuries, Durga takes on a Brahmanical form as the embodiment of Shakti, the ten-armed Devi who destroys the demon Mahishasura. But she is also personal. She is the daughter of every Bengali family, whose visit every autumn is much awaited. She is the endearing, protective mother, ‘Durga Ma’, in the company of her four children. Yet she is also political, be it in Mughal Bengal, in the pre-independence era of nationalist politics, or in Mamata’s Bengal. Durga in that sense, permeates every aspect of Bengali life, and is key to understanding Bengal.

The ancient roots of Durga worship

The evidence of a non-Brahmanical tradition of goddess worship existing in Bengal comes from the large number of local or village goddesses that continue to be worshipped even today. Known by various names, these deities are associated by a range of attributes or functions, the most important among which is the protection of the village or the family that worships them. “In Bankura district, for instance, the village of Chhandor was associated with the goddess known as Jangalasini Devi, Lakhershole village with Kamakhya Devi, Naricha village with the deity Sarvamangal Devi, Ajodhya village with the deity known as Kaluburi and Raipur village with Ambika Devi,” writes historian Kumkum Chatterjee in her exhaustive account of Durga worship in Bengal titled, ‘Goddess encounters: Mughals, Monsters and the Goddess in Bengal’.

Then there are those goddesses, more specifically associated with a fear or disease. Manasa for instance, is the goddess of snakes, worshipped for the prevention and cure of snakebites. Sithala on the other hand, is the goddess of smallpox, and Olai Chandi or Ola Bibi is worshipped to ward off Cholera.
Chatterjee writes that the non-Brahmanical origins of these goddesses is underscored by the fact that the hereditary priest or priestess associated with them are usually drawn from the lower castes like the Bagdis, Bauris, Doms, and Majhis who inhabited these regions.Historian Kunal Chakrabarti, an authority on the history of religion in India, explains that religion in Bengal is almost completely centered around goddess worship because of the late entry of Brahmanism in the region as opposed to that in the Ganga valley. In his book, ‘Religious processes: The Puranas and the making of the regional tradition’, he writes “Bengal remained outside the sphere of Brahmanical influence for a long time, and largescale Brahmana migration to Bengal did not begin before the Gupta period (mid 3rd century to 6th century CE).”

“Therefore the beliefs and practices of the indigenous communities could strike deeper roots than in other parts which were Brahmanised earlier,” says Chakrabarti over the phone. He says the same is also true for religious traditions in southern India, parts of western India like Maharashtra and Rajasthan as well as in Kashmir. Chakrabarti says Brahmanical religion, like almost every institutionalised religion of the world like Christianity, Islam or Judaism, is patriarchal. “It is interesting that in those parts of the world where Christianity went late, like northern Africa, parts of southeast Asia and so on, where there was already an existing goddess worship tradition, the epiphany of Mother Mary is stronger,” he says.

In Bengal, as Chakrabarti explains, goddess worship was so common and prevalent that when the Bramanists came and attempted to impose their socio-religious hegemony, they found that their acceptance would be incomplete unless they came to terms with the existing beliefs and practices or the indigenous communities. They also found that while goddesses were worshipped in many forms across the Bengal region, there was no central focus like we have in Durga today. “What the Brahmanists attempted to do was to adopt goddesses like Manesa, Chandi, Shashti. They are mentioned in the Sanskrit Brahmanical Puranas that began to be composed in Eastern India and particularly Bengal from the eighth or ninth centuries till about the 13th or 14th,” says Chakrabarti.

In these Puranas, there existed a process of adoption, appropriation and even transformation of the local goddesses. There was an attempt to give them Brahmanical appearances through ancestry and false genealogies. Manasa for instance, is the daughter of Shiva. The goddesses were also equated with an abstract energy or Shakti, of which the various local goddesses were mere manifestations. She was seen as the moving force behind all actions, which ensured her inclusion in the Brahmanical pantheon without subverting her indigenous identity. But the process was also selective. Sithala, for instance, never made it to the Brahmanical pantheon.

Durga, in the form in which Bengalis celebrate her today, appears in the ‘Devi Mahatmya’ section of the Markandeya Purana where she is shown as the killer of the demon Mahishasura. “Durga grew to this lofty status over time. She absorbed many traits from the gods and goddesses around her. As the gods all gave her weapons to kill the demon in her puranic origin myth, on a subtler level village deities gave her many qualities that were later incorporated into her stories,” writes scholar of religious studies, June McDaniel in her book, ‘Offering flowers, feeding skulls: Popular goddess worship in West Bengal’.

“Durga literally means ‘goddess of difficult terrain’. This was not really a goddess of the indigenous people. She was assiduously pushed by the Brahmanas, and they were trying to propagate the importance of the annual festival,” says Chakrabarti. “What the annual festival does is to take away the goddess from everyday worship and makes it into a cult event once a year. They attempted to do the same with other goddesses of everyday worship as well like Kali and Lakshmi. By doing this, the Brahmanists believed that they would gradually disassociate the goddesses from the people and make it into their province,” he adds. In the case of Durga though, this process was most successful as is evidenced by the fact that there are hardly any permanent temples dedicated to her in Bengal. She is worshipped once a year, in autumn. The rest of the year she is celebrated in the anticipation of her homecoming.

There is yet another transformation that Durga goes through with the coming in of the Vaishnava tradition in Bengal sometime in the 15th century. “The most important result of the Vaishnavisation of the Goddess was evident in the much greater emphasis on her attributes as wife, but probably even more important as mother and daughter,” writes Chatterjee. She notes that through this transformation of the goddess from a fierce warrior to benign mother and daughter, Durga was ‘softened’. She was also elevated, humanised and popularised.

Seeking the legitimacy of the goddess

In Bengal, there exists a long history of connection between Durga worship and political power. Raja Ganesh of the 15th century, who had usurped power from the Sultan of Bengal, and his son who converted to Islam and ruled as Jalaluddin Muhammad Shah, proclaimed their association with the Goddess and issued coins bearing symbols associated with the deity. Chatterjee notes that in the late Sultanate and the period of the inception of Mughal rule, aspiring and successful rajas and landed magnates, particularly in the forested south-western tracts of Bengal, emphasised on their association with the Goddess. “The origin accounts of very many rajas who founded kingdoms in these areas attribute their political success to the blessings of the Goddess,” she writes.

We find similar employment of Durga in offering legitimacy to Mughal rule in Bengal as well. Chatterjee points to two mid-eighteenth century Bengali texts — Annandamangala written by Bharatchandra Roy, the court poet of the Raja of Nadia, and the Maharashtrapurana written by Gangarama. Both these texts provide sufficient evidence of an evolving strong relationship between the Mughals and Durga, the former seeking the legitimacy of the Goddess in establishing their rule in Bengal.

There is something to be said about the rise in the public performance of Durga worship under the Mughals. The first Durga Puja is known to have been celebrated in Bengal sometime in the late 16th or early 17th centuries. The names of three local Rajas are contended as hosts of this ‘first’ Durga Puja — Raja Kangshanarayan of Tahirpur in northern Bengal (now in Bangladesh), Bhavananda Majumdar, the Raja of Nadia in Western Bengal, and Lakshmikanta Majumdar of the Sabarna Chowdhury family who controlled large tracts of land of what later became Calcutta.

Chatterjee writes that each of these individuals had strong links with the Mughal regime. They offered collaboration and military services to the Mughals and in return were given revenue-collecting rights and titles. “Each of them used their newly-acquired political and material power via the Mughals to establish themselves as leaders and arbiters of Brahmanical samajs in the immediate areas which they controlled,” writes Chatterjee. They established their credentials as adherents of various Brahmanical deities of which the Goddess, in her various forms (Durga, Kali, Jagaddhatri) was certainly the most important.

With the economic decline in the Mughal empire, the zamindars or the Hindu landowners of Bengal became little rajas in their own right, exercising huge control over vast territories of land. The eighteenth century was a time of dynamic social and political changes in Bengal. There were brutal raids carried out by the Marathas, Afghan insurrections within Nawabi ranks, revenue realignments and of course the Battle of Plassey that helped the East India Company seize control over Bengal.

“If the eighteenth century taught any lessons to the Hindu zamindars of Bengal, it was the need to be extremely alert and wary about their political loyalties,” writes historian Tithi Bhattacharya in her research paper, ‘Tracking the goddess: Religion, community and identity in Bengal’. She suggests that at a time like this when political affiliations were constantly shifting, the splendid and ostentatious celebrations of Durga Puja helped the zamindars assert and display political authority, financial stability and administrative control.

With the rise of British power and the emergence of Calcutta as the site of political and economic control, a new mercantile class emerged which worked closely with the Europeans. Durga Puja celebrations became the perfect means through which this class asserted its financial influence, not just over the natives, but also to the British and other Europeans. Bhattacharya describes the stiff competition that existed among the eminent mercantile families over the extent and scope of spending. The Durga idol of the Gandhabanik family of Sibkrishna Da was decorated with gold jewellery engraved with stones imported from Paris. Their principal rivals, the Tagores, immersed their idol along with the enormous amount of gold jewellery on her.

The Durga Puja celebration in the palatial house owned by Nabakrishna Deb in Shobhabazar has been documented in detail and continues to remain an annual event that attracts Kolkata inhabitants and tourists. Deb was the famous ‘bania’ of Robert Clive. “Dancing girls were hired from Murshidabad and even as far as Lucknow. Festivities continued for nearly half a month and made that first puja under the new regime iconic in every way,” writes Bhattacharya.

Tapati Guha-Thakurta, a retired professor of History who has been researching on the contemporary cultural politics of the Durga Puja, traces the non-religious aspect of the festival today to the celebration of it by the mercantile class of 19th and 20th century Bengal. “This hedonistic side to pujo, or what we like to call the ‘secular’ side, where its a time for entertainment, consumption, advertisement, touring, or the fact that its religiosity is eroding, is not a new thing. It can be traced back to the big ‘babuder pujo’ or the ‘bonedi barir pujo’ (puja celebrations of the traditional zamindar families) and their excesses and extravaganza,” she says.

By the turn of the 20th century, Durga was once again invested politically. This time it was with the spirit of nationalism. The Bengali press was loaded with patriotic songs that played upon the image of Durga in association with the nation. Durga Puja became the perfect platform for the swadeshi campaign, with advertisements encouraging people to engage in Puja shopping of only those products made in India. Faced with Gandhi’s call to abolish untouchability, the ‘sarbajanin’ (universal) puja was born in 1926 which was open to all regardless of birth or residence. The first such Puja was called the “Congress Puja” and organised at Maniktala in north Calcutta. The sarbajanin pujas became a platform for swadeshi fairs.

Durga in Mamata’s Bengal

Since 2011 when the TMC came to power in Bengal, the party has been deeply invested in Durga Pujas, far more than what its predecessor the CPI(M) was. However, as Guha-Thakurta points out, TMC’s politicisation of the Durga Puja was not in the name of a Hindu religious festival. “There is a political ideology of religious inclusivity that the TMC has been pushing. The TMC has been pushing the idea that Durga puja is ‘secular’ and so we can have a Muslim mayor sponsoring one of the biggest pujas and that the act of painting the eye of the goddess can be turned into a secular political act,” says Guha-Thakurta.

Ever since 2011 when Banerjee became chief minister, hundreds of puja pandals are either inaugurated by her or by other TMC leaders, a role which was previously the domain of celebrities. She composes lyrics and gets reputed singers to record them as part of puja special albums. She began to give direct party donations to the clubs. She started her own state award for the Durga Pujas. In 2015, she announced an immersion day procession, on the same lines as the Republic Day parade. The last salute of the parade is given to the chief minister.The BJP too has been trying to make inroads into this complex politicisation of the Durga Puja. From 2015 to 2017, as Muharram, a Shia Muslim festival collided with the immersion, the TMC government restricted all activities around the Durga immersion, on the ground that it wanted to avoid communal clashes. The BJP picked up on the issue to accuse the TMC of Muslim appeasment. Last year, the BJP’s women’s wing organised a Puja at the International Centre for Cultural Relations in Kolkata. It was inaugurated virtually by PM Modi.

In the past few years, the Puja pandals have increasingly become a platform to play out major socio-poltiical events as well.In 2019, for instance, the Young Boys Club Sarbojanin Durga Puja Committee based in central Kolkata, played out the Balakot air strike in its Puja pandal. The Puja of Rajdanga Naba Uday Sangha on the other hand, took up the issue of the NRC. Who can forget the image of the migrant worker with her children as the theme of the Barisha Club Puja in Behala that went viral in 2020? Guha-Thakurta agrees that such themes are a way for the opposition to hit back at the ruling party. “But the Puja has opened up this space. One cannot think of Durga Puja as pure worship and leave all that out. It has happened over a long history,” she says.

Further reading:

‘Goddess encounters: Mughals, Monsters and the Goddess in Bengal’ by Kumkum Chatterjee

Religious processes: The Puranas and the making of the regional tradition by Kunal Chakrabarti

Offering flowers, feeding skulls: Popular goddess worship in West Bengal by June McDaniel

Tracking the goddess: Religion, community and identity in Bengal by Tithi Bhattacharya

In the name of the Goddess: The Durga Pujas of contemporary Kolkata by Tapati Guha-Thakurta

Adrija Roychowdhury

Source: Indian Express, 1/03/21

Provide data on the education of Muslims

 Monitoring the educational progress of Muslims was hamstrung by the absence of official data, leading to their downward spiral that went unnoticed for decades. Educational reform is critical to promoting and sustaining the development of communities. This is particularly true for Indian Muslims, who are, today, India’s most educationally disadvantaged community. However, this change cannot even be articulated without addressing the limitations in the official education data sets available on Indian Muslims.

Without empirical evidence, educational planning will depend on subjective and impressionistic views. This was highlighted by the 2006 Sachar Committee Report on Muslims, which observed that it was often believed, without data, that most Muslim children studied in madrasas, thus encouraging religious fundamentalism. The evidence indicated that far fewer Muslim children attended madrasas than believed — around 4% of those aged seven-19 — and that most Muslim students attended government and government-aided schools.

A major contribution of the report was to highlight the paucity of data on Indian Muslims in general and their education in particular. Consequently, more official educational data was released, but glaring omissions and deficiencies persist in many government sources of information.

This includes the most recent compilation of the department of education, Educational Statistics at a Glance, 2018, which has continued with the post-Independence tradition of providing data for the general population, and separately for Scheduled Castes (SC) and Scheduled Tribes (ST), but excluding Muslims as a separate category. Muslims have also been excluded, and SCs and STs included, in the student enrolment data furnished by special government school networks run by the Kendriya Vidyalaya Sangathan (KVS) and the Navodaya Vidyalaya Samiti (NVS).

Muslims are also conspicuous by their absence in the National Achievement Surveys (NAS) of the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT). The most recent 2017 NAS evaluated the learning outcomes of about 2.2 million students in language, mathematics and environmental studies in classes 3 and 5, and tested social studies, science and environmental studies in Class 7. Like the previous publications, learning data was provided separately for SC and ST students. While now including Other Backward Classes (OBCs) too, the NAS Report excluded Muslims from its purview.

The importance of this type of learning data, enrolment and other statistics is highlighted by comparing the post-Independence educational trajectories of Muslims, SCs and STs. Educational statistics in colonial India indicated that Muslims were far ahead of SCs and STs in educational enrolment at all levels of school and higher education.

However, unlike Muslims, SCs and STs made educational progress in post-Independence India. The availability of data on SCs and STs allowed for special educational schemes to be launched for them. National and state planners and government agencies used a variety of educational indicators to track their quantitative and qualitative progress, thus enabling corrective action.

On the other hand, monitoring the educational progress of Muslims was hamstrung by the near-total absence of official data, and consequently, their inexorable downward spiral went publicly unnoticed for decades. When official education statistics and the 2001 Census data on Muslims was finally made publicly available, the true extent of their “invisible” comparative decline was revealed.

Muslims have been the most educationally backward group in India. In comparison to their population, they have the lowest enrolment rates at elementary, high school and higher secondary school education, as well as higher education.Since the official educational statistics have revealed for almost a decade that Muslims are the most educationally backward, it is unreasonable for the department of education’s Educational Statistics at a Glance, KVS, NVS and NCERT to continue to exclude Muslims from their purview. Though recent school and higher education reports — District Information System for Education and All India Survey on Higher Education — do provide data on Muslims, it is not comprehensive.

What should the government do to remedy this? First, review all official publications including the Census, and publish data on Muslims that is made available for SCs and STs. This includes statistics on enrolment, learning, examination results, provision of facilities/ scholarships in all central and state reports, which would assist in tracking the educational progress of Muslim students, at all stages and networks of school and higher education. Institutions such as Unicef, Unesco and the World Bank should also be urged to follow suit in the reporting of data.Data on Muslims and all other religious minorities should be reported separately. This will help avoid any ambiguity since it is unclear whether the use of the term “minority or minorities” refers to Muslims only or all religious minorities.

Indian Muslims are now close to 200 million and comprise almost 15% of the population. Any sustained educational reform that can pull them out of the economic, social and political morass they find themselves in, can only be implemented on a strong foundation of comprehensive data on Indian Muslims that can help track their educational progress.

John Kurrien has been working in the field of the education of disadvantaged groups for four decades

Source: Hindustan Times, 2/03/21

Quote of the Day March 2, 2021

 

“Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect.”
Mark Twain

“जब भी आप अपने आपको बहुमत में पाएं, तो मान लें कि रुक कर चिंतन करने का समय आ गया।”
मार्क ट्वैन