India's newly appointed Prime Minister Manmohan Singh recently announced his intent to establish quotas in education and employment for Muslims and other minorities, ostensibly to alleviate the low representation of minorities, particularly Muslims in the public and private sector.

Prime Minster Singh said his United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government's priority was to empower minorities socially and economically through greater attention to education and employment.

In a country that is right now on a path to become a developed nation by 2020, rigid quotas are not healthy. The United States tried them in the 70s and 80s and found them to be counter-productive both to the minorities that were being targeted, as well as to the economy as a whole. The lessons learnt in the US show that minorities tend to become complacent and non-competitive in such a milieu, and the majority develops a hostile attitude, bringing both social unrest and economic decline to the nation. For India to succeed on a global platform, reservations of jobs should be avoided at all costs. It would be a death pill for a growing economy and the Indian industry's overall competitiveness.

What the UPA government first needs to focus on is protection of the basic fundamental rights of minorities and that includes all the regional minorities as well. Only if the basic fundamental rights are protected can a country succeed and prosper. It is time that Congress party makes amends and rectifies its policies that were in place when the party was in power last during the early 90s. It was during those times Kashmiri Hindus were ethnically cleansed from their homeland of Kashmir. Back then, the Congress government sat still and let the worst ethnic cleansing in India happen. It is time that Dr. Singh talks about protecting the fundamental rights of Kashmiri Hindus who don’t even have a homeland.

The UPA government's priority should be to secure the fundamental rights of all minorities, and only then can minorities successfully participate in the economic growth of the country. In this context, the Uniform Civil Code initiative, which was unceremoniously abandoned by the BJP-led government, should also be implemented so that Muslim women in India can be accorded the same protections available to all other Indian women.