By TCN News,
New Delhi: Within days of disclosure by the National Commission for Minorities about discrimination by government banks against minorities – whether to open new account or taking loan – Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh today reiterated his dream inclusive growth.
Addressing 55th National Development Council meeting in New Delhi today the PM said the objective of Five-Year plan must be inclusive growth, not just growth.
Photo by PIB
“The Eleventh Plan objective was to achieve inclusive growth at an annual rate of 9 per cent… Our objective was not just growth, but inclusive growth. This means a growth which would bring tangible benefits to the weaker sections, the SC/ST, minorities and other excluded groups,” Dr Singh said.
He also said that as three years of the Eleventh Plan are over the inclusive growth should be measured.
“Three years of the Eleventh Plan are over. It is time to look back on what we have achieved, identify areas where performance falls short and take corrective steps where needed… To measure progress on inclusiveness the Plan had identified a total of 27 monitorable indicators. The data to measure progress on many of these indicators will become available only after some time,” the PM disclosed.
Only three days ago the National Commission of Minorities had disclosed to the media that it received a record number of complaints from Muslims alleging discrimination by scheduled commercial banks in the opening of accounts and getting loans. According to the commission the complaints were 1,508 in 2007-08 but they rose to 2,268 in 2009-10. The figures for 2009-10 are for only nine months – July 1, 2009, to March 31, 2010.
While the PM of Congress-led government talks about inclusiveness, the heavy chunk of the complaints, interestingly, have come from Andhra Pradesh – the South India state currently ruled by the same party. In the state last year no bank was prepared to open accounts for over 90,000 Muslim students to deposit their scholarship amounts.
NCM chairperson Mohammed Shafi Qureshi has disclosed a heavy drop in the number of bank accounts operated by Muslims in the scheduled commercial banks. “The number of accounts decreased by the end of March 2009 by 47 per cent in Assam, which has about 32 per cent Muslims, 17.44 per cent in West Bengal, 46.2 per cent in Karnataka and 6.99 per cent in Kerala,” he has been quoted as saying.
Not only this, members of the community are also discriminated by banks when they approach them for loans. When there is discrimination at the level of opening of account one can just guess the magnitude of discrimination at lending.