 You are watching News Made Easy, I'm Anandya Chakravarty and today I'm going to be talking about the growing attacks on Muslims in various parts of India. And when I say attack, I mean not just physical attack, I mean humiliation, I mean intimidation and that's been happening regularly. It has increased over the last few days. Of course, there is a political element to that. There are certain elections coming up and therefore maybe there is an organized attempt to up the ante to polarize voters. But the bigger question of course is why are these attacks on ordinary Muslims? Someone who has gone to, who is selling Golgappa, someone who is making dosas and selling it, someone who is selling chudis, someone who has gone to just pick up Kabadi, a scrap dealer, someone who is a tanga puller. Why are there attacks on such people with such frequency? More importantly, why is there such support for attacks on such people? These are poor people, ordinary people, these are underdogs, these are people you would normally feel sympathy for. What kind of a mentality makes people happy when these people are attacked, beaten or humiliated? I have never been able to understand this from my own standpoint because when people say, oh Muslims have been appeased, they've been given a lot of support by the state, by the Nehruvian state, by Indira Gandhi, by the Gandhi's, the Nehru Gandhi family, by the Congress. Then my instinct is to say what kind of rubbish is this? This is utter rubbish because around me I know that there are very few Muslims in positions of power, positions of authority, whether you look at the bureaucracy, whether you look at doctors, lawyers, you look at the various government organizations. Muslims are underrepresented and this is not just some kind of my own impression. The various commissions which have looked into it, the various assessments that have been done, studies that have been done, surveys that have been done have all said that this is true. This is what has been happening and you can find that out yourself. You can read up the Satchar committee report. It's not new, it's old and things have only deteriorated. Before that there was the Jagannath Mishra, Ranganath Mishra committee report. There are NSSO surveys, there's a CIMI surveys about employment amongst Muslims and that's very clear that the situation has always been bad. Now one reason why there is this angst on the ground, on the street is because, ironically, the salary jobs have come down and you would say why should that matter? It's not as if Muslims ever had salary jobs. You can show that Muslims were discriminated against, whether it's in government positions, whether it's in corporate and private jobs, salary jobs Muslims never thought that they can get it. Well, that is precisely the reason why Muslims have been relatively immune to the slowdown that has taken place in India, the economic slowdown that has taken place in India over the last 10 years and which has accelerated over the last 5-6 years. Now if you look at CIMI's own data which they have collected surveys, regular surveys that they have done since the beginning of 2016, you will see that Muslims have been the least affected by the decline in jobs during the Modi regime. So if I, let's say, compare CIMI's data for 2016-17, the number of jobs, number of people who were employed in 2016-17 with 2019-20. Remember, I'm not taking the COVID collapse. So I'm taking two points which are part of the same economic process. Then overall, there's been a 1.7% drop in total number of employed in India, between 2016-17 to 2019-20. Remember, despite population increasing, there's been a drop. If I look at Hindus, that drop is even bigger. It's 2.2%. This data is available for subscribers to CIMI, useful data. When I look at the drop in numbers of those who are Muslim, employment numbers for those who are Muslim, it is just 0.1%. Why has that happened? Because Muslims take up occupations and professions which are not related to what is happening to the government space. So when the state withdraws, when the government withdraws from the economy, salary jobs go down. When contractual jobs become easier to give, when there's a slowdown in the organized sector, what happens is that jobs are lost. Jobs are lost and it becomes more and more difficult for the educated people to get jobs. Now Muslims have got used to being self-employed. So they have been more or less immune. So when you look around you, think about it. When you look around you, you look at the middle-class space, look in your neighborhood. There aren't that many Muslims like you of your background. They got ghettoized over the last 30 years. Muslims in major cities have started living in specific areas. And those are areas where there aren't many Hindus. And in many places, we know anecdotally there are reports that Hindus are not giving Muslims places on rent. So that ghettoization is taking place both by push and pull. Because of that, you don't see many Muslims around you in the middle-class. But you do see a Muslim house painter. You do see Muslim tailors. You do see Muslim metal workers. You do see Muslim overdrivers. You do see Muslim Zomato delivery people. So there is a relatively disproportionately high representation of Muslims in this kind of a gig economy and in the self-employed service space. More than their overall population. Whereas in the salaried segment, you will find Muslims are underrepresented. So when the salaried stable job regulates space contracts, the people who have been most affected are Hindus. Most affected are the intermediate caste and upper caste. So it's the upper caste and intermediate caste like which CMI calls intermediate caste. They identified jarts, patales and marathas and other caste amongst intermediate caste. These people have lost heavily. So again, if I look at the COVID period, what has happened in the COVID period? This is interesting. Because Muslims are self-employed, they're itinerant workers, they're part of this gig economy. When the first lockdown came, they were the worsted. So when the first lockdown came in April 2020, if I compare what happened in that month, compared to March 2020, CMI's data shows us that there was a 61% drop in employment amongst Muslims. And when we look at Hindus, that drop was 25%. 61% for Muslims, 25% for Hindus. Of course, as the gradually the lockdown was removed, even last year in 2020, we can compare the March 2020 data pre-COVID with the post-COVID September 2020 data against CMI. We will see that there was a drop of overall employment. The employment of Hindus dropped by 4% in September, in the September quarter of 2020, compared to the March quarter of 2020. Remember, quarter is a three-month period. We're taking an average there. Now, what happened at this time for Muslims? Their employment actually increased by 3%. So there was an increase of employment amongst Muslims between pre-COVID to post-COVID, the September quarter, when the lockdown was coming out. So this is the reverse is equally true. When the lockdown comes, Muslims get affected the most. When the lockdown is reopened, Muslims recover their jobs the fastest, because they are in the unstable self-employed space, mostly service space. Now, let's now look at what happens within the, within the those who are categorized as Hindu, those who have work. Look at upper caste and intermediate caste. The difference is even more stark. Muslims, as I told you, had a gain of about 3%, but upper caste employment dropped by 8%. Intermediate caste employment dropped by 9%. So that is a clear difference that you can see, right? Again, what happened in the second lockdown? Let's look at what happened in the second lockdown. Between April and May this year, Hindus saw just a 2.4% drop in employment, while Muslims saw a sharp 14% decline. There was 14% drop. Again, as I said, lockdown comes, those who have salaried or regular jobs are less likely to be thrown out immediately, but those who are dependent on providing daily services or have small businesses which run on, which depend on daily customers, they are affected the most. So 14% drop. And when the lockdown opened, so let's look at the compare, June and July, the upper caste Hindus continued to see a drop in employment. 8.1% drop between June and July for upper caste Hindus. But what happened to Muslims? Employment of Muslims increased between June and July by 36%. That is the dramatic increase. So again, as the economy is more and more moving towards lower income, providing gig economy, service sector economy, employment, the skew of employment has changed completely. So Muslims had adopted already to self-employment mode of existence, which is low income. Remember, those who are self-employed earn about half of what those who are salaried earn. This is government data, about half or even less than that. The Muslims being more in tune with self-employment, having adopted it much earlier than Hindus, what has happened is that for an unemployed, educated Hindu, often upper caste and intermediate caste, what happens is that they see that these Muslims have jobs, they're getting married, they're buying a new bike, they're roaming around wearing new jeans, they have work, they're earning, nothing has happened to them. Why are we unemployed? It is a great ground, a great ground to create hatred and enmity. It's a great ground to tell them that, look, the Muslims have jobs because they were appeased, the Congress government appeased them, worked for you and did not work for you who are the majority. You are in a subjugated position not because of today, but because of what happened thousand years ago. You are in this position because of what happened when the Delhi Sultanate came, when the Mughals came and fake news spread through WhatsApp, through social media and on mainstream media news debates that helps create an atmosphere of hatred, anger, desperation, which then translates on the ground into one, organized attacks but support for those organized attacks, widespread support for those organized attacks. This is one of the reasons for the rise of communal hatred in India. One of the reasons, I'm not saying this is the main reason, but it is one of the reasons for the rise of communal hatred in India and the only way to counter it is to organize and ask, make people demand jobs so that the hatred moves from the subaltern, from the person who deserves sympathy to the system, to a system which does not give them employment. That's the show today. Keep watching NewsClick.