‘Buddhists Not Benefiting from India’s Inclusive Growth Policy’

October 13, 2008

Author: Rajeev Ranjan Roy

Source: Sindh Today

Wire Service: IANS

http://www.sindhtoday.net/south-asia/27798.htm

India’s nearly eight million Buddhists are not benefiting from the government’s inclusive growth policy to enhance the socio-educational status of minorities, says Lama Chosphel Zotpa, a senior member of the National Commission for Minorities (NCM).

‘We are not benefiting from India’s policy of inclusive growth. Buddhists continue to remain on the margins and have to slog on their own to keep life going against all odds,’ Zotpa told IANS in an interview.

‘The government has not met even a single important demand of the Buddhist community. It is, perhaps, because we are peace loving people and do not matter numerically in the country’s electoral politics,’ Zotpa said.

According to him, the community’s key demands were setting up a Lord Buddha Foundation, an International Buddhist University, special funding for monastery education, and inclusion of the Bhoti language in the 8th Schedule of the Indian Constitution.