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10 years change little in minority education -Basant Kumar Mohanty
-The Telegraph

New Delhi: A rough comparison between a government survey of all the country's campuses and a more limited scan earlier by the Rajinder Sachar committee suggests that Muslims' participation in higher education has seen little improvement over the past decade.

Sachar, a retired judge, told The Telegraph the latest findings buttressed his view that the UPA government had failed to adequately implement its educational schemes for the minorities, announced after his 2006 survey report revealed the extent of overall Muslim deprivation.

The All India Survey of Higher Education 2013-14, released last week, says that Muslims account for just 4.3 per cent of India's higher education enrolment, from undergraduates to PhD students. The community makes up 14.2 per cent of the country's population.

Non-Muslim minorities, who make up 6 per cent of the population, account for 2 per cent of enrolment.

Sachar, who scanned only a group of leading colleges in 2004 and 2005, found that just 4 per cent of undergrads and 2 per cent of postgraduate students were Muslims.

Even allowing for the Sachar survey's smaller scope and the possibility that Muslims' proportion among undergrads alone could be a little higher than the overall campus figure of 4.3 per cent, the conclusion of tardy progress appears inescapable.

(The undergrad count cannot be substantially higher than 4.3 per cent because the group represents an overwhelming majority of all university students - 79 per cent, according to the survey - and therefore heavily influences the overall stats.)

"Going by this report, there has been no improvement in education of Muslims," Sachar, whom the UPA government had appointed to assess Muslims' overall socio-economic conditions, said.

Based on Sachar's findings, the UPA government had launched a 15-point programme that offered scholarships to minorities and promised new schools and colleges in districts with sizeable minority populations.

"The schemes have not given results. Students are not getting scholarships because of poor implementation," Sachar said.

He added that Muslims were generally keen on education but could not always afford it.

P.S. Krishnan, a former Union government secretary and one-time member of the National Commissions for the Scheduled Castes and the Scheduled Tribes, partially blamed NGOs.

He said non-profit voluntary organisations had been drafted under the UPA scheme to spread awareness of the scholarships and help students fill in the forms, but not enough applications reached the government.

Another reason, Krishnan said, was that although 85 per cent of Muslims qualified for Other Backward Classes (OBC) reservation, students from the community failed to compete with their peers from other OBC communities.

"There should be sub-quotas for different categories within the OBCs," Krishnan said.

The Centre had in 2011 carved out a sub-quota for minorities within the 27 per cent OBC reservation, setting aside 4.5 per cent of all seats in government-aided colleges for them. But Andhra Pradesh High Court quashed it and the matter is before the Supreme Court.

The latest survey has found that Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe enrolment in higher studies, too, falls short of their share of the population.

Krishnan said the Scheduled Castes had been receiving reservation benefits (15 per cent) since 1943 and the Scheduled Tribes (7.5 per cent) since 1947, and "should have by now been able to fill their full quota".

He said that part of the reason this hadn't happened was the "discouraging atmosphere" on campuses, where they are taunted and harassed. He blamed it on the way upper caste children's "minds are poisoned" against Dalits and tribal communities from childhood.

The OBCs make up 52 per cent of the country's population, according to a pre-Independence survey, but account for 32 per cent of higher education enrolment, which is higher than their quota.

About 3.23 crore students are enrolled in diploma, undergraduate, postgraduate, MPhil and PhD programmes in the country, the survey says. Of these 54 per cent are male. While 12 per cent are enrolled in postgraduate programmes, just 0.4 per cent are pursuing PhDs.