Muslims in India suffer from substantially greater economic deprivation than Hindus. The divide is far greater in urban India, where a proportionately larger number of Muslims reside.
 
This is the portrait of India's two main religious groups as revealed in the results of the 55th round countrywide survey conducted in 1999-2000 by the National Sample Survey Organisation (NSSO), the autonomous body of the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation.
 
It is the same 'official' NSSO surveys which yield usually reliable estimates of consumption expenditure, employment and other characteristics that are routinely used as inputs for policy-making by the Government.
 
Some of the main findings of the survey are:

• The NSSO estimates show that a larger proportion of Muslims than Hindus suffer from low levels of consumption. The best summary economic measure is how much a person spends on food, clothing, entertainment and other items of consumption. Average consumption expenditure by each member of a family was less than Rs. 300 a month in 29 per cent of rural Muslims, while the corresponding proportion for rural Hindus was 26 per cent. (These are people who belong to the bottom 20 per cent, grouped according to consumption.)
   
  The difference is much wider in towns and cities where as many as 40 per cent of Muslims belong to the bottom 20 per cent, nearly double the 22 per cent figure for Hindus. In other words, poverty must be much higher among the Muslims. Correspondingly, at the higher end of the economic scale, the proportion of Hindus belonging to the top 20 per cent of consumption expenditure was higher than Muslims in the villages, and thrice as many in the towns. Since more than a third of India's Muslims live in urban centres, compared to less than a quarter of the Hindus, the average level of consumption in Muslim households is obviously much lower than for the Hindus.
   

• If cultivation of land still decides economic status in rural India, then Muslims remain at a disadvantage. Of the Muslim households with access to land, 51 per cent cultivate very little or no land while for Hindu households it was 40 per cent.
   

• If a regular salaried job' in urban India makes it more likely that a household will enjoy a better economic position, then here again the Muslims are at a disadvantage. Only 27 per cent of Muslim households in the towns and cities had a working member with a regular salaried job (43 per cent in Hindu homes), 52 per cent were self-employed and 15 per cent worked as casual labourers.
   

• Unemployment among Muslims was higher in the rural areas but only marginally more in the towns. Unemployment rates among members of both sexes in the work force, measured according to the `usual status', were 2.1 per cent and 1.4 per cent for the Muslims and Hindus (rural India), while the corresponding figures for urban India were 5 and 4.7 per cent.
   

• Illiteracy rates are also higher among the Muslims. In rural areas, 48 per cent of Muslims above the age of 7 could not read or write, while 44 per cent of the Hindus were in the same situation. In the urban areas, the gap is much wider: 30 per cent among the Muslims and only 19 per cent among the Hindus.

If the Muslim Indian in 1999-2000 did more poorly in consumption, education, employment and land holding, the changes over time do not indicate that the gap between the two main religious groups is closing.
 
The NSSO surveys show that during the 1990s the divide was either constant or growing wider. This is discussed in the next and concluding article.