Muslims continue to face a variety of barriers to self-employment and salaried employment, a new report by Oxfam India has found.
The “India Discrimination Report 2022,” which emphasises bias in accessing jobs, livelihoods, and agricultural credits among others, states that in 2019–20, 15.6% of urban Muslims aged 15 and over were working regular salaried jobs, compared to 23.3% of non-Muslims.
According to the report, discrimination was to blame for 70% of the disparity between Muslim and non-Muslim salaried workers in 2019–20. “The lower employment for urban Muslims credits 68% to discrimination,” it stated.
Non-Muslims earn Rs 7,000 per month more than Muslims on average, while non-Scheduled Castes (SCs) and Schedules Tribes (STs) earn Rs 5,000 per month more than those from the two communities, the report showed.
The survey revealed that discrimination in casual employment is rapidly rising in rural SC and ST areas.
According to the data, discrimination was primarily responsible for 79% of the income inequality experienced by rural SC and ST casual wage employees in 2019–20, a significant rise of 10% from the previous year.
Muslims Hit Hard During Covid
Muslims in rural regions had a 17% increase in unemployment during the first quarter of COVID-19.
“For salaried workers during Covid, Muslims emerge as the most affected group for which the percentage figures went up from 11.8 to 40.9 in rural areas, the corresponding increase for SC/ST (5.6 to 28.3) and general category (5.4 to 28.1) being less than that,” it said.
According to the survey, Muslims in rural areas had an earnings loss of up to 13%, compared to an average of about 9% for everyone else.
According to the study, Muslims in rural regions who are self-employed had an earnings decline of roughly 18%, compared to less than 10% for SC/STs and other groups.
Compared to OBCs and other members of the same income group, SC and ST community members in the poorest 20% of the income distribution in 2017 received 1.7 times less hospital care.
In 2019–20, discrimination was the main cause of the decreased employment for urban Muslims, accounting for 68.3 percent of the problem. According to the survey, there was 59.3% more discrimination against Muslims in 2004–05 than there was in the previous 16 years.
Non-Muslims with regular salaries in metropolitan areas make Rs 20,346 on average, which is 1.5 times more than Muslims who make Rs 13,672, the report said.
“This means non-Muslims are earning 49 per cent more than Muslims in regular employment,” the report noted.
“Self-employed non-Muslims earn Rs 15,878 on an average, while self-employed Muslims earn Rs 11,421 despite the community’s overrepresentation in urban self-employment. This means non-Muslims are earning a third more than Muslims in self-employment,” it said.
Oxfam India’s CEO, Amitabh Behar, stated that prejudice has a variety of negative effects on society, including not only social and moral issues but also economic ones.
These conclusions are based on official data on labour and employment from 2004–2005 to 2019–2020.
The Oxfam India report refers to unit-level data from 61st National Sample Survey data on employment-unemployment (2004-05), Periodic Labour Force Survey in 2018-19 and 2019-20, and All India Debt and Investment Survey.
(With PTI inputs)
