Union budget painted with communal colour

Saswat Panigrahi

Playing a communal card, Finance Minister P Chidambaram has doubled the allocation of the Ministry of minority affairs from Rs 500 crore in 2007-08 to Rs 1,000 crore in 2008-09. It’s the only department to register a 100 per cent increase in allocation of funds. Moving ahead with UPA’s commitment to speedy implementation of the Sachar Committee recommendation, the Union Budget 2008-09 has announced drawing up of a multi-sectoral development plan exclusively for each of the 90 minority concentration districts, which will cost the national exchequer a whopping Rs 3,780 crore.

More over, a pre-metric scholarship scheme has been announced exclusively for the minority – by allocating as much as Rs 80 crore from next year. Another Rs 45.45 crore has been approved for modernising of madarsa education from the next fiscal. The UPA Government has also decided to recruit more candidates belonging to the minority communities to the Central para-military forces in the coming fiscal.

The overtone of communal appeasement reminds me PM Manmohan Singh’s ‘Muslim first’ assertion. While addressing the national development council meeting last year, PM said, "We will have to devise innovative plans to ensure that minorities, particularly the Muslim minority, are empowered to share equitably in the fruits of development. They must have the first claim on resources."

And as the Finance Minister P Chidambaram has rightly emulated PM’s assertion -- by allocating benefits on religion lines -- hence adding to yet another chapter of UPA’s communal appeasement.

It is indeed pertinent to mention here that UPA in a crude attempt at Muslim appeasement formed Sachar Committee. In the pretext of going into the social, economic and educational status of Muslims, the notorious report of the committee by its very genesis has been exposed of disseminating such irresponsible propaganda.

This is a fact that a vast section of Muslims are reeling from poverty. Election comes and goes. Nurturing vote bank politics Congress rides to power. And for the congress party the plight of the indigent Muslims never cease to make the rounds. As soon as the poll ends, it put in the cold storage to be used in the future election.

Being busy in polarizing votes in a poll hue the UPA has forgotten the truth that there are crores of people in the country living in miserable conditions. The first claim on resources should be of those section.

These poverty stricken people can't be divided in communal lines for the shake of votes. Muslim's issue can't be excluded from the development process. And by separating Muslim issue from the rest UPA has nurtured a communal divide. By promoting one community over another, the UPA Government incites communal sentiments, which distorts the national spirit.

-- Published in msn.co.in on March 14, 2008