New Delhi: Addressing a rally in Surendranagar, Gujarat, on May 2, Prime Minister Narendra Modi repeated the anti-Muslim messaging that has become the mainstay of his election campaign but also added a new charge: that the Congress party has promised to create a special quota for Muslims in the awarding of government tenders if it comes to power. [Video link; Watch from the 30’32” minute mark]
“The Congress’s manifesto, on every point, is full of appeasement, appeasement, appeasement. Today I will tell you something about their manifesto which will shock you,” he said, adding:
“They have put it in writing – my journalist friends will also be shocked to hear this – they have said it in writing that now, that for government tenders there will be a quota fixed for minorities, for Muslims. So from now on, will government contracts be awarded on the basis of religion? And reservation introduced for that?”
Modi went on to say that government contracts have always been awarded on the basis of proper qualifications and that it would be wrong to fix quotas on the basis of religion and caste. Yet the Congress was doing it for its ‘vote bank’, he charged.
But what is the factual basis of Modi’s claim? Does the Congress manifesto for the 2024 Lok Sabha election really propose to introduce quotas for Muslims in government c0ntracts?
The short answer is no.
The Congress manifesto makes a reference in two places to “public works contracts”. The first one is in the section on ‘Equity’, which deals with the Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes and Other Backward Classes, and the second is in the section on ‘Religious and Linguistic Minorities’. Here is what it says.
Page 6, para 8:
“The scope of the Public Procurement Policy will be expanded to award more public works contracts to contractors belonging to the SC and ST communities.” (emphasis added)
Page 8, para 6:
Just so we are clear, in the case of SCs and STs, the Congress says it will “award more public works contracts to contractors belonging to the SC and ST communities. And in the case of minorities, the party says it will ensure that “minorities receive their fair share of opportunities in… public works contracts… without discrimination.”
Nowhere does the manifesto speak of a fixed quota for minorities or Muslims, as Modi claimed. All it promises is that it will ensure a ‘fair share’ for minorities ‘without discrimination’. In another paragraph, in fact, it promises to “ensure that banks will provide institutional credit to minorities without discrimination.” This is a widely reported problem that Muslims face in India but perhaps Modi in a future speech can now claim that the Congress is promising a “quota for bank loans” too.
It is hard to see how promising minorities a “fair share of opportunities… without discrimination” can mean the fixing of a quota for them. The fact that Muslims face discrimination in employment, education, housing and financing has been well documented— by the Sachar Committee in 2006 and the follow-up report submitted to the Modi government in October 2014 by Prof Amitabh Kundu.
The Kundu panel, in fact, specifically noted that quotas “are only one of several tools to address widespread, systemic discrimination in a society” and that the government should instead move “beyond reservations” to look at “diversity promotion and anti-discrimination to achieve social justice.”
The Modi government has so far failed to act on its recommendations.
Ironically, BJP leaders including Modi and external affairs minister S. Jaishankar have both emphasised the importance of the ‘no discrimination’ principle when it comes to government policies.
“In India, the benefits that are provided by the government [are] accessible to all,” Modi said in Washington in June 2023, in response to a question from a Wall Street Journal reporter. “Whoever deserves those benefits is available to everybody. And that is why, in India’s democratic values, there’s absolutely no discrimination neither on basis of caste, creed, or age, or any kind of geographic location.”
Jaishankar went one step further, speaking to a think-tank in Washington in September 2023:
If Modi and Jaishankar are right and there is no discrimination in India, then promising minorities or Muslims or any section of the population “a fair share of opportunities… without discrimination” is merely a redundant assurance.
But if Modi and Jaishanakar are wrong, as indeed official and academic data suggests, then promising an end to discrimination against Muslims so that they have a fair share of opportunities in education, healthcare, public employment, skill development, sports and cultural activities – and public works contracts too – only means standing by Article 14 of the Constitution of India which prohibits any kind of discrimination.
There is also a wider irony in Modi’s Surendranagar speech, given that he is the last person in India who can afford to complain about rules and norms being broken in order to award government contracts ‘by quota’. A flashback here might help. “When the Indian government approved the privatisation of six airports in 2018, it relaxed the rules to widen the pool of competition, allowing companies without any experience in the sector to bid,” the Financial Times has noted. “There was one clear winner from the rule change: Gautam Adani, the billionaire industrialist with no history of running airports, scooped up all six.” The Modi government has also been accused of swinging contracts and policy changes for its corporate friends – in India and even abroad. Coal mines. Spectrum. Dharavi. Sri Lanka. Bangladesh. Greece.
Making Muslims his target
When it comes to government tenders, the Congress manifesto has actually offered the minorities – or ‘Muslims’, as Modi loves to emphasise – less than what it has promised to the SC and ST communities. Muslims can at best expect a “fair share of opportunities” in public contracts “without discrimination”. What this means is an assurance that they will not be knocked out of the competition for public works contracts at the starting line itself. But the manifesto explicitly promises SCs and STs much more: A future Congress government will actually “award more public works contracts to contractors belonging to the SC and ST communities.”
The fact is that SCs, STs and Muslims all face discrimination to varying degrees and there is an urgent need to end the pervasive social and institutional bias that Indians from these communities face.
What Muslim entrepreneurs need is the equality of opportunity, which is all that the manifesto appears to offer. But given the historical burden of discrimination faced by bahujans, the Congress’s public works proposal for SC and ST contractors – that more contracts will definitely be awarded to them – is not just necessary but potentially path-breaking. In the US, for example, city and federal government contract ‘set asides’ for African-American owned businesses have helped increase black business ownership rates, thereby reducing the black-white gap a little.
It is hard to imagine Modi, who appears to have gone through the Congress manifesto with a tooth-comb, missed seeing this. There is no doubt he found this promise deeply upsetting too. But canny politician that he is, he knew he would run the risk of alienating SC and ST voters if he attacked the Congress for the ‘government tender’ promises the party was making them. So he deliberately chose to spread alarm over a non-existent ‘fixed quota’ for Muslims.
As the election proceeds, the number of speeches where Modi has made false claims or outrightly lied – mostly to target Muslim Indians in his quest for Hindu votes – is now in double digits. Complaints have piled up with the Election Commission but these remain unadjudicated.
