Muslims now have the lowest asset and consumption levels among major religious groups in India, unit-level data provided in the latest All India Debt and Investment Survey (AIDIS) and Periodic Labour Force Survey (PLFS) show.
The sinister efforts by a section of leaders, chauvinists and bureaucrats to marginalise the Muslim community by breaking its economic backbone seem to be systematically bearing fruit.
The average consumption and asset values for Muslims are 87.9% and 79% of the all-India average and 87.8% and 79.3% of the average values for Hindus. Religious groups which have a population share of less than 1% have been clubbed in the “others” category, an analysis of the data done by the Hindustan Times said.
The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leaders and several other leading Hindutva fanatics have often been dog-whistling a lot about the population of Muslims increasing at a higher pace than people of other faiths in India. This bigoted campaign is purely based on calumny, deception and misinformation.
Muslims do have an overrepresentation problem when it comes to their relative share in the population among the poor. A comparison of relative share – among every decile class by assets; it basically measures the share in a given decile class divided by overall share in population – shows that Muslims are concentrated in the bottom half of India’s population and outnumber the Hindus in relative terms in each of the bottom six deciles.
Even Muslim upper castes are poorer than Hindu OBCs, data shows.
The data shows that even non-SC/ST/OBC Muslims have a low share in regular jobs compared to other religions. The disadvantage for Muslims becomes even bigger if one looks at their share in government jobs, a fact which has been pointed out by the Sachar Committee among others,” it said.
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