By TCN Staff Reporter
Delhi: Work population ratio, which is an indicator used to analyse the employment situation in the country, continues to remain the lowest for Muslims, a reply by the Minister for Minority Affairs Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi revealed in the Parliament on Thursday.
The Ratio, calculated by dividing the number of employed persons/total population*1000, stood at 32.6% for Muslims against a national average of 39.8%, Naqvi said in his reply to a question posed by AIMIM’s Asaduddin Owaisi.
In 2001, the same number for Muslims stood at 31.3 against a national average of 39.1%.
The reply also added that “as per NSS 68th round report of the National Sample Survey Office (NSSO), on ‘Employment and Unemployment Situation Among Major Religious Groups in India’ (July 2011-June 2012) although there is a decrease in the Worker Population Ratio amongst rural persons of Islamic community, there has been an improvement of 1.1% in respect of Urban persons of Islamic community as compared to NSS 66th round of the similar report.”
Importantly, the report mentioned by Naqvi, which is available online gives a clear picture of the Muslim WPR. It says, “The rural-urban differentials existed in the WPRs during 2004-05, 2009-10 and 2011-12 with WPRs in rural areas being on the higher side for all the major religious groups except for Muslims during 2011-12.” The report adds, “WPR was the lowest for Muslims (49.9% for rural males, 15.3% for rural females, 53.2% for urban males and 10.5% for urban females).
The report goes on to add, “During 2011-12, among the specific religious groups, for males in rural areas WPR was the highest for Sikhs (56.9%) and in urban areas, it was the highest for Hindus (55%) and for females in both rural and urban areas, WPR was the highest for Christians (28.4% in rural areas and 25.2% in urban areas)”.
However, another question posed by Owaisi regarding the reasons for this low share of Muslims, the reply added that “the reason for not working by an individual is not collected in the Census”.