New Delhi, May 2: While the Sachar Commission Report highlighted the poor socio economic condition of Indian Muslims, a survey by the National Minority Commission has some encouraging signals for the other four notified minority communities in the country.

The report titled ‘Socio-economic Status of Notified Minority Communities (Christians, Sikhs, Buddhists and Parsis) except Muslims’, says that the minority communities—apart from the Muslims—have a literacy rate higher than the average literacy rate of the country and that the proportion of undernourished children among these communities is way behind the national average.

As per the report, being fine-tuned at the NCM and to be released soon, the Parsis have the highest literacy rate among the notified minorities—97.9 per cent followed by Christians 80.3 per cent, Buddhists with 72.7 per cent and Sikhs with 69.4 per cent. This is against the country’s average literacy rate of 64.8 per cent.

The literacy rate among women in these communities is also higher than the national average of 54.6 per cent. Christian women have the highest literacy rate at 76.2% and Buddhist women have the lowest at 61.7 per cent. Among the four minority communities, the male-female literacy gap is highest among the Buddhists and the lowest among the Parsis. The Sachar Commission had put the literacy rate of Muslims at 59.1 per cent.

These minority communities also have a better health and nutrition record than the national average of 47 per cent. Buddhists have the highest proportion of undernourished children at 39.2 per cent and Sikhs have the lowest at 22.8 per cent. This is against the all-India average for malnourished children—47 per cent.

According to the report, the fertility rate has fallen too. “The fertility rate of all minority communities, except the Buddhists whose rate of growth is already very low, experienced a fall. The rate of fall in fertility rate is highest among the Sikhs,” the report states.

Among the minorities, landowning is the highest among Christians—only 54.81 per cent are landless and the situation has been improving over the last decade. On the other hand, the proportion of landless among Sikhs and Buddhists has gone up in the last decade. It now stands at 66.50 per cent for Sikhs and 71.60 per cent for Buddhists.

The report states that among the lowest strata of minority communities, the Christians have the largest proportion of self-employed workers and that the Buddhists are the least self-employed. Among the rich, self-employment is high among the Sikhs and least among the Parsis. According to the report, Parsis are more involved in tertiary activities like administrative, executive and managerial occupations. It also says that as many as 68 per cent live in rural areas.

The four minorities constitute 5 per cent of the country’s total population. Of this, the Christians account for 2.3 per cent, Sikhs for 1.9 per cent, Buddhists for 0.8 per cent and the Parsis stand at .007 per cent.

It is understood that the National Minority Commission went ahead with this survey on the four notified minority communities since majority of the Commission members felt that the Sachar Commission Report dealt mainly with the Muslim community.