Gujarat minorities, 11.5% of state, failing to utilise govt schemes, blame poor governance

By A Representative
The Gujarat-based civil rights group Minority Coordination Committee (MCC), in a letter to Gujarat chief minister Bhupendra Patel, has regretted that that the absence of a minorities department in the state is adversely impacting the administration of different state agencies that are meant to cater to the needs of minorities.
Especially referring to how three different state agencies -- Gujarat Waqf Board, Gujarat Minority Finance and Development Corporation and Gujarat Haj Committee – are operating under separate government departments, MCC convener Mujahid Nafees said in his letter, it would be advisable to place them under a new minority affairs department.
Today, the Wakf Board is administered by the Legal Department, the Haj Committee is administered by the General Administration Department, and the the Department of Social Justice and Empowerment implements the Centre-sponsored Scholarship Scheme, 15-point programme as well as the schemes of Minority Finance and Development Corporation.
“From the administrative point of view and for the convenience of the people, if all the institutions created for minority affairs are administered under the auspices of a single department, the administration and the general public will also be facilitated and a specific budgetary allocation of money can be made”, the letter said.
Due to lack of a single nodal government department, Nafees claimed, “11.5% minorities of Gujarat including Muslims, Jains, Christians, Sikhs, Buddhists, Parsis, Jews etc. are deprived of concrete development works.”
Insisting that this could be done by forming a separate minority affairs department on lines of the Government of India’s Minority Affairs Ministry as also several other states, Nafees, who has sent copy of the letter to the Gujarat Chief Secretary and the Leader of the Opposition, demanded, this should done on “immediate basis.”

Manufacturing, services: India's low-skill, middle-skill labour remains underemployed

By Francis Kuriakose* The Indian economy was in a state of deceleration well before Covid-19 made its impact in early 2020. This can be inferred from the declining trends of four important macroeconomic variables that indicate the health of the economy in the last quarter of 2019.

Incarceration of Prof Saibaba 'revives' the question: What is crime, who is criminal?

By Kunal Pant* In 2016, a Supreme Court Judge asked the state of Maharashtra, “Do you want to extract a pound of flesh?” The statement was directed against the state for contesting the bail plea of Delhi University Professor GN Saibaba. Saibaba was arrested in 2014, a justification for which was to prevent him from committing what the police called “anti-national activities.”

Modi’s Israel visit strengthened Pakistan’s hand in US–Iran truce: Ex-Indian diplomat

By Jag Jivan M. K. Bhadrakumar , a career diplomat with three decades of service in postings across the former Soviet Union, Pakistan, Iran, Afghanistan, South Korea, Sri Lanka, Germany, and Turkey, has warned that the current truce in the US–Iran war is “fragile and ridden with contradictions.” Writing in his blog India Punchline , Bhadrakumar argues that while Pakistan has emerged as a surprising broker of dialogue, the durability of the ceasefire remains uncertain.

Search This Blog