Effectiveness of Government Schemes in Transforming Religious Minorities: A Review

Abstract

Purpose: The Government has implemented various schemes for the welfare and upliftment of every section of the society including minorities especially the economically weaker and deprived sections of the society. Ministry of Minority Affairs also implements programmes/ schemes for socio-economic and educational empowerment of the six centrally notified minority communities namely Christians, Sikhs, Buddhists, Muslims, Parsis and Jains. Hence, the extensive review of existing literatures on role of Government Schemes in empowerment of religious minorities has been conducted to identifying the factors influencing empowerment of Minorities and also to identify the gap in this body research.

Design/Methodology/Approach: Secondary sources are used to gather the information needed for the current investigation. This is based on an analysis of the literature that has already been published, including information from a variety of exploratory articles, papers, books, journals, and magazines. The information needed for the study was gathered via Google Scholars, Research Gate, and Science Direct.

Findings: The minority communities are socially deprived, economically backward and educationally under-privileged in India. Despite having many efforts on educational development, the access and participation of minority communities are less and insufficient. Though both central and state government has implemented various schemes for the well- being of religious minority group, due to lack of awareness about the schemes minorities are using only selected schemes. All the states are not benefitted uniformly from the schemes and there should be a positive change in social structure.

Originality/Value: This study will provide guidelines to Government and policy makers for uplifting the religious minority group.

Paper type: Literature Review paper.