This giant leap of over 500 per cent in just seven years is an alarming, non-secular appeasement of one religious community when one considers that the Indian government is so desperate to reduce food grains and fertiliser subsidy to the large and poor farming community. The nation would thus have frittered away some Rs 5 billion on Haj subsidy by this time next year.
Would this amount not have served a truly national purpose if, instead of being given away for mere pilgrimage of a particular community, it had been employed to, say, provide drinking water facilities to women and children in Rajasthan and elsewhere who trudge over two miles a day to fetch a bucket or two of that essential commodity?
What's more, there is a discriminatory element in the present Haj subsidy. As doled out till now, it is given by the Union civil aviation ministry to Air-India towards its charter operations for the Haj pilgrimage. In other words, only those Muslims who choose to go to Mecca by air avail of the subsidy. As per one newspaper report, of the 120,000 Indian Muslims who went on the Mecca pilgrimage this year, some 70,000 were to go by air and, therefore, got the subsidy at rate of more than Rs 20,000 per head.
