Sugar tax may be the bitter pill to cut obesity:-
After years of waiting, the World Health Organisation (WHO) finally took a stand on January 25 and urged governments to levy taxes on sugar-sweetened beverages to end childhood obesity. The recommendation was based on a new report commissioned by it. “The Commission believes that there is sufficient rationale to warrant the introduction of an effective tax on sugar-sweetened beverages,” the report notes.
Besides levying taxes, the WHO also recommends a host of other interventions such as increasing the amount of physical activity and improving access to health food.
The impact of taxation measures on purchasing behaviours has been well documented in the case of tobacco. However, in the case of sugar-rich drinks, the WHO acknowledged that strong evidence on the benefits is lacking but underlined that evidence will become available once countries that have been levying such taxes on unhealthy foods and sugar-laden drinks “monitor their progress”.
Hungary, France, Finland and Mexico are among the many countries that have taken to such measures.
While the risks of childhood obesity are greatest in lower socio-economic groups in the high-income countries, data from Brazil and Mexico, which are largely middle-income countries, confirm that levying taxes on sugar-rich drinks achieves the desired results in the target population.
The case of India:-
In the case of India, at the current rate of sales of sugar-sweetened drinks, a 20 per cent increase in taxes will reduce overweight/obesity by 3 per cent (11.2 million cases) and diabetes by 1.6 per cent (4,00,000 cases) between 2014 and 2023, a January 2014 modelling study published in the journal PLOS ONE said.
One of the reasons for the WHO recommending taxation measures to rein in consumption of unhealthy food is the burgeoning number of overweight and obese children younger than five years. In 2014, 41 million children in this age group were either overweight or obese across the world.
India may be one of the biggest contributors to the global pool as obesity in people in the age group of 15-49 has increased steeply during the last few years, as the National Family Health Survey (NFHS) 2014-2015 reveals.
India faces a double whammy of obesity and underweight children. Though with respect to the last NHFS survey the percentage of underweight children has reduced this time, it is still very high — from nearly 14 per cent in Sikkim to nearly 44 per cent in Bihar. This is a big concern as children who were born with low birth weight are at a greater risk of becoming overweight and obese when they consume energy-rich diets and have a sedentary lifestyle.
This singularly must be the reason why India should seriously consider introducing additional taxes on sugar-laden drinks, besides encouraging more physical activity in schools and other interventions.
Urban and Urbanism and the Imagination there in :-
Urbanisation, driven by the motto that ‘cities are the engines of growth’, has been a key tenet of India’s structural reforms. Since 1993, policymakers have pushed an aggressive urban upgradation and expansion programme through schemes such as the Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission and the recently launched Smart Cities Mission and Atal Mission for Rejuvenation and Urban Transformation; by 2030, if not earlier, over 40 per cent of India will be urban.
The City in transition :-
Global cities today find that they are no longer the cities of the organised working class or of that older notion of a bourgeoisie that finds in the city the place for its self-representation and projection of its power (including its civilising power).
In a world transformed by information technology and capital mobility, attracting global fixed capital investment in the form of corporate headquarters, production facilities and downtown skyscrapers, and circulating capital (as transportation, tourism and cultural events) through an international identity has become, as political scientist Darel E. Paul observes, ‘a nearly universal economic development strategy’. Earlier, the competition would have between nations but with privatisation, deregulation and growing decentralisation, cities have acquired greater significance.
The evidence is all around us in India. We see the galvanising force of the pursuit of a global identity in new towering office blocks, flyovers and public transportation systems, in the proliferation of cafes, nightclubs, boutiques, malls, convention centres and hotels, in the drive against slums and ageing buildings, in urban beautification projects and cultural festivals. The trend is pervasive, percolating from the metro to Tier II cities, small towns and even rural districts where one can see apartment blocks often built with the Non-Resident Indian in mind, sprouting next to paddy fields.
The phenomenon of urban gated communities, exclusive enclaves for the rich with their own security and essential supply systems, are now an integral part of cities everywhere.Punta del Este, a beachside city in Uruguay that has become a gated city for the uber-rich, described how the creation of menial jobs for the poor of the city had been accompanied by a steep hike in costs for basic food, clothing and transport.
The new urban landscape is particularly hard on the poor, as displacement, a familiar theme in India’s developmental trajectory since the dislodging of tribals from their habitats for the erection of dams, is now played out for the building of glossy towers and beautification projects. But the aesthetic demands of a global makeover throws up new, more minute, forms of displacement. The disappearance of lakes and the replacement of trees — that might have provided sustenance to the poor — with decorative plants are growing trends in Indian cities.
Internationally, there is the spread of ‘hostile architecture’ which includes “anti-homeless” spikes and the Camden bench — a sculpted grey concrete seat designed by a London borough in 2012 to discourage sleeping or skateboarding.
While citification has stirred much public anticipation, the privileging of the global in the new urban imagination needs to be reflected on in urbanising India. At a time when the issue of social justice has been thrown to the forefront, its potential for expanding inequality is of particular concern.
And this indeed throws up the question – Urbanisation – is it worth chasing and Sustainable city – a myth or reality ?
The Gandhian Way – Industrialization , Urbanization and the Machine :-
According to Gandhiji the industrialisation and urbanisation have created multiple problems and miseries for the modern man. In the process, we have tried to explain in detail as to how industrialisation, modern civilisation and rapid urbanisation have created chaos, lop-sided development, rapid depletion of natural resources and danger for natural environment.
Gandhi was critical of modern civilisation, rapid industrialisation and galloping urbanisation. In this context, we find the pertinence of Gandhian ideas.
Long before the modern environmentalists, Gandhi correctly realised that rapid industrialisation can not be the panacea to all ills. Increasing industrialisation in today’s world has not reduced social inequalities, but has rather resulted in further differentiations.
Increasing use of technology has led to greater heterogeneity, greater inequalities and greater un-altruistically oriented behaviour.
Gandhi regarded industrialisation detrimental to growth of a non-violent and eco-friendly society. In his ideal society, as in the classical anarchist model, there would be complete decentralisation of political and economic system and self-sufficient, barter type of village economy would be the desired model.
Machinery has, in his judgement; three-essential attributes. First, it can be duplicated or copied. Secondly, there is no limit to its growth or evolution. Thirdly, it appears to possess a will or genius of its own that operates as the inevitable law of displacement of the labour. Once the machine is created and allowed to operate, it goes more and more out of human control.
Ideally, Gandhi regards all machinery as thoroughly undesirable. Once he commented: “Today machinery merely helps a few to ride on the backs of millions. The impetus behind it all is not philanthropy to save labour but greed. It is against this constitution of things that I am fighting with all my might”.
His arguments against machinery can broadly be divided into two categories: ethical and economic. The arguments of the first category run as follows:-
(i) Labour is a value relative to non-violence and machinery tends to undermine it.
(ii) Machines are repugnant in his thinking to the good life.
(iii) The invention of machinery has led to the growth of the factory system which has reduced the masses of men to the condition of slaves.
(iv) The technological advancement has led to the growth of the monetary exchange system which is characterised by inequality and exploitation.
(v) Machinery has led to the growth of economic competition which undermines the process of cooperation.
The arguments falling in the second category are:
The displacement of human labour is an essential characteristic of a machine and a great argument against it, introductions of machines results in employment of a few and unemployment of many, it saves labour and provides leisure, leisure results in wastage of time, and potential cause of demoralisation.
Machines lead to the concentration of wealth in the hands of a few.
Machinery inevitably leads to mass production and mass production necessarily leads to over production, storage, transportation. Hence Gandhiji used to say that instead of mass production there should be production by masses.
The application of machinery in agriculture may destroy the fertility of the soil and lead to loss of production.
Machines lead to growth of congested, unhygienic cities, speed of travel, etc. which results in the loss of health.
Gandhi felt that the present industrialisation and use of large scale machinery was not very healthy and resulted in serious economic dislocation. Dead machinery must not be pitted against millions of living machines.
As Gandhi once commented:-
“Mechanisation is good when the hands are too few for the work intended to be accomplished. It is an evil when there are more hands than required for the work, as in India.“
Large scale industrialisation perpetuates war and many other evils and all the naturalness come to an end.
In conclusion, Gandhi rejected the modern industrial-urban concept of development for its anti-democratic, anti-humanitarian, and exploitative features. In its place Gandhi offers the ideal of the economically self-sufficient, politically self-governing and culturally non-violent village republic as the guarantee of genuine democracy, true humanism, civilising non-violence and lasting peace. Thus Gandhiji was in favour of technology and development of cottage and small scale industries at village level because these industries are localised, energy saver, job intensive and less polluting. According to him cities should as store and forwarding houses and no production in cities to prevent congestion and pollution.
Conclusion:-
Gandhi was beyond his times and a true visionary. In this context , it is indeed a dilemma who is right – the policy makers and thinkers of our times or Gandhi ? Is it worth chasing urbanisation ? And above all – can we try the Gandhian model and succeed in ensuring a better living condition and better life for the denizens ?
The questions are indeed mind-boggling and there can not be a compartmentalization of ideas and hence can the mix of two ideas in certain degree help us realize our goal as a society , and above all – What is the middle path in this regard ?
The question demands an immediate answer , yet it is far too difficult to provide one, and this will remain the dilemma of our times.
Indian Village and E-Commerce:-
One of the primary agendas of the liberalization which began in 1991 was to improve competitiveness and reduce the transaction costs which largely restricted India’s trade with the rest of the world. But a quarter century after economic reforms were initiated, this Coasean problem of transaction costs remains more relevant than ever. The World Bank’s latest World Development Report, or WDR, points to the potential of Internet and communication technology (ICT) in pruning these.
The Coase theorem (named after British economist Ronald Coase) states that if trade in an externality is possible and there are sufficiently low transaction costs, bargaining will lead to an efficient outcome regardless of the initial allocation of property. Since the digital revolution, the virtual world has increased the possibilities of trade in the real world, minimizing these transaction costs. Transaction costs include search and information costs, bargaining and decision costs, and policing and enforcement costs.
The WDR cites the example of the Taobao villages in China to show the extent to which the Internet can induce development. Taobao, a consumer-to-consumer portal established by Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba, allows entrepreneurs to open online stores and sell their products to interested consumers. A Taobao village is a cluster of rural e-tailers where at least 10% of village households engage in e-commerce.
It’s worth looking at the potential benefits of such a model in India. Over half of India’s population depends for its livelihood on an agricultural sector that cannot support it adequately. Structural reforms may improve the sector’s viability, but the only long-term solution is enabling the rural population’s access to other forms of economic activity. An e-retail model that aims at incorporating rural households could offer some utility here.
As matters stand, e-commerce in India is almost entirely an urban phenomenon. Clustering rural retailers as the Taobao model does creates the volume necessary for incentivizing at least some portion of the logistical and financial support urban retailers enjoy. And it could have the secondary benefit of providing a boost to artisans who lack access to a wider market, making traditional crafts unsustainable.
E-commerce ventures structured along similar lines such as ITC e-choupal, Craftsvilla and Kerala’s Kudumbashree have had moderate success in the past.
The major obstacle, of course, is the lack of rural Internet access. India has the ironic reputation of having the second largest number of Internet users and the largest offline population in the world. Internet usage is highly skewed in favour of men and urban households compared to women and rural households.
Digital India initiative aims at resolving this bottleneck. Its goal of connecting rural areas with high-speed Internet networks is laudable, as is its focus on digital literacy. How such a mammoth undertaking will play out remains to be seen. And to be successful—particularly in the context of the Taobao model—it must form robust linkages with other government initiatives that range from providing a cradle-to-grave digital identity to universal access to banking services.
Other hurdles wait further down the road. Judging by the government’s Start-up India push, the infant industry syndrome is an occupational hazard in the Indian policy environment. Rural e-commerce should not fall into the same trap. If the Internet has to become an effective catalyst for efficiency and innovation, competition is essential. Alibaba’s Taobao advanced so much on the efficiency frontier due to intense competition from eBay.
The last thing the rural economy needs to add to the protectionism the agricultural sector enjoys is a subsidized, protected retail segment.
ICT alone accounted for one-fifth of global growth from 1995 to 2014. In 1990, American economist Paul Michael Romer said, “Economic growth occurs whenever people take resources and rearrange them in ways that are more valuable… History teaches us that economic growth springs from better recipes, not just from more cooking.” Technological change is an endogenous factor in growth and Internet is technology at its best.
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Steve Ovett, the famous British middle-distance athlete, won the 800-metres gold medal at the Moscow Olympics of 1980. Just a few days later, he was about to win a 5,000-metres race at London’s Crystal Palace. Known for his burst of acceleration on the home stretch, he had supreme confidence in his ability to out-sprint rivals. With the final 100 metres remaining,
[wptelegram-join-channel link=”https://t.me/s/upsctree” text=”Join @upsctree on Telegram”]Ovett waved to the crowd and raised a hand in triumph. But he had celebrated a bit too early. At the finishing line, Ireland’s John Treacy edged past Ovett. For those few moments, Ovett had lost his sense of reality and ignored the possibility of a negative event.
This analogy works well for the India story and our policy failures , including during the ongoing covid pandemic. While we have never been as well prepared or had significant successes in terms of growth stability as Ovett did in his illustrious running career, we tend to celebrate too early. Indeed, we have done so many times before.
It is as if we’re convinced that India is destined for greater heights, come what may, and so we never run through the finish line. Do we and our policymakers suffer from a collective optimism bias, which, as the Nobel Prize winner Daniel Kahneman once wrote, “may well be the most significant of the cognitive biases”? The optimism bias arises from mistaken beliefs which form expectations that are better than the reality. It makes us underestimate chances of a negative outcome and ignore warnings repeatedly.
The Indian economy had a dream run for five years from 2003-04 to 2007-08, with an average annual growth rate of around 9%. Many believed that India was on its way to clocking consistent double-digit growth and comparisons with China were rife. It was conveniently overlooked that this output expansion had come mainly came from a few sectors: automobiles, telecom and business services.
Indians were made to believe that we could sprint without high-quality education, healthcare, infrastructure or banking sectors, which form the backbone of any stable economy. The plan was to build them as we went along, but then in the euphoria of short-term success, it got lost.
India’s exports of goods grew from $20 billion in 1990-91 to over $310 billion in 2019-20. Looking at these absolute figures it would seem as if India has arrived on the world stage. However, India’s share of global trade has moved up only marginally. Even now, the country accounts for less than 2% of the world’s goods exports.
More importantly, hidden behind this performance was the role played by one sector that should have never made it to India’s list of exports—refined petroleum. The share of refined petroleum exports in India’s goods exports increased from 1.4% in 1996-97 to over 18% in 2011-12.
An import-intensive sector with low labour intensity, exports of refined petroleum zoomed because of the then policy regime of a retail price ceiling on petroleum products in the domestic market. While we have done well in the export of services, our share is still less than 4% of world exports.
India seemed to emerge from the 2008 global financial crisis relatively unscathed. But, a temporary demand push had played a role in the revival—the incomes of many households, both rural and urban, had shot up. Fiscal stimulus to the rural economy and implementation of the Sixth Pay Commission scales had led to the salaries of around 20% of organized-sector employees jumping up. We celebrated, but once again, neither did we resolve the crisis brewing elsewhere in India’s banking sector, nor did we improve our capacity for healthcare or quality education.
Employment saw little economy-wide growth in our boom years. Manufacturing jobs, if anything, shrank. But we continued to celebrate. Youth flocked to low-productivity service-sector jobs, such as those in hotels and restaurants, security and other services. The dependence on such jobs on one hand and high-skilled services on the other was bound to make Indian society more unequal.
And then, there is agriculture, an elephant in the room. If and when farm-sector reforms get implemented, celebrations would once again be premature. The vast majority of India’s farmers have small plots of land, and though these farms are at least as productive as larger ones, net absolute incomes from small plots can only be meagre.
A further rise in farm productivity and consequent increase in supply, if not matched by a demand rise, especially with access to export markets, would result in downward pressure on market prices for farm produce and a further decline in the net incomes of small farmers.
We should learn from what John Treacy did right. He didn’t give up, and pushed for the finish line like it was his only chance at winning. Treacy had years of long-distance practice. The same goes for our economy. A long grind is required to build up its base before we can win and celebrate. And Ovett did not blame anyone for his loss. We play the blame game. Everyone else, right from China and the US to ‘greedy corporates’, seems to be responsible for our failures.
We have lowered absolute poverty levels and had technology-based successes like Aadhaar and digital access to public services. But there are no short cuts to good quality and adequate healthcare and education services. We must remain optimistic but stay firmly away from the optimism bias.
In the end, it is not about how we start, but how we finish. The disastrous second wave of covid and our inability to manage it is a ghastly reminder of this fact.
On March 31, the World Economic Forum (WEF) released its annual Gender Gap Report 2021. The Global Gender Gap report is an annual report released by the WEF. The gender gap is the difference between women and men as reflected in social, political, intellectual, cultural, or economic attainments or attitudes. The gap between men and women across health, education, politics, and economics widened for the first time since records began in 2006.
[wptelegram-join-channel link=”https://t.me/s/upsctree” text=”Join @upsctree on Telegram”]No need to remember all the data, only pick out few important ones to use in your answers.
The Global gender gap index aims to measure this gap in four key areas : health, education, economics, and politics. It surveys economies to measure gender disparity by collating and analyzing data that fall under four indices : economic participation and opportunity, educational attainment, health and survival, and political empowerment.
The 2021 Global Gender Gap Index benchmarks 156 countries on their progress towards gender parity. The index aims to serve as a compass to track progress on relative gaps between women and men in health, education, economy, and politics.
Although no country has achieved full gender parity, the top two countries (Iceland and Finland) have closed at least 85% of their gap, and the remaining seven countries (Lithuania, Namibia, New Zealand, Norway, Sweden, Rwanda, and Ireland) have closed at least 80% of their gap. Geographically, the global top 10 continues to be dominated by Nordic countries, with —Iceland, Norway, Finland, and Sweden—in the top five.
The top 10 is completed by one country from Asia Pacific (New Zealand 4th), two Sub-Saharan countries (Namibia, 6th and Rwanda, 7th, one country from Eastern Europe (the new entrant to the top 10, Lithuania, 8th), and another two Western European countries (Ireland, 9th, and Switzerland, 10th, another country in the top-10 for the first time).There is a relatively equitable distribution of available income, resources, and opportunities for men and women in these countries. The tremendous gender gaps are identified primarily in the Middle East, Africa, and South Asia.
Here, we can discuss the overall global gender gap scores across the index’s four main components : Economic Participation and Opportunity, Educational Attainment, Health and Survival, and Political Empowerment.
The indicators of the four main components are
(1) Economic Participation and Opportunity:
o Labour force participation rate,
o wage equality for similar work,
o estimated earned income,
o Legislators, senior officials, and managers,
o Professional and technical workers.
(2) Educational Attainment:
o Literacy rate (%)
o Enrollment in primary education (%)
o Enrollment in secondary education (%)
o Enrollment in tertiary education (%).
(3) Health and Survival:
o Sex ratio at birth (%)
o Healthy life expectancy (years).
(4) Political Empowerment:
o Women in Parliament (%)
o Women in Ministerial positions (%)
o Years with a female head of State (last 50 years)
o The share of tenure years.
The objective is to shed light on which factors are driving the overall average decline in the global gender gap score. The analysis results show that this year’s decline is mainly caused by a reversal in performance on the Political Empowerment gap.
Global Trends and Outcomes:
– Globally, this year, i.e., 2021, the average distance completed to gender parity gap is 68% (This means that the remaining gender gap to close stands at 32%) a step back compared to 2020 (-0.6 percentage points). These figures are mainly driven by a decline in the performance of large countries. On its current trajectory, it will now take 135.6 years to close the gender gap worldwide.
– The gender gap in Political Empowerment remains the largest of the four gaps tracked, with only 22% closed to date, having further widened since the 2020 edition of the report by 2.4 percentage points. Across the 156 countries covered by the index, women represent only 26.1% of some 35,500 Parliament seats and 22.6% of over 3,400 Ministers worldwide. In 81 countries, there has never been a woman head of State as of January 15, 2021. At the current rate of progress, the World Economic Forum estimates that it will take 145.5 years to attain gender parity in politics.
– The gender gap in Economic Participation and Opportunity remains the second-largest of the four key gaps tracked by the index. According to this year’s index results, 58% of this gap has been closed so far. The gap has seen marginal improvement since the 2020 edition of the report, and as a result, we estimate that it will take another 267.6 years to close.
– Gender gaps in Educational Attainment and Health and Survival are nearly closed. In Educational Attainment, 95% of this gender gap has been closed globally, with 37 countries already attaining gender parity. However, the ‘last mile’ of progress is proceeding slowly. The index estimates that it will take another 14.2 years to close this gap on its current trajectory completely.
In Health and Survival, 96% of this gender gap has been closed, registering a marginal decline since last year (not due to COVID-19), and the time to close this gap remains undefined. For both education and health, while progress is higher than economy and politics in the global data, there are important future implications of disruptions due to the pandemic and continued variations in quality across income, geography, race, and ethnicity.
India-Specific Findings:
India had slipped 28 spots to rank 140 out of the 156 countries covered. The pandemic causing a disproportionate impact on women jeopardizes rolling back the little progress made in the last decades-forcing more women to drop off the workforce and leaving them vulnerable to domestic violence.
India’s poor performance on the Global Gender Gap report card hints at a serious wake-up call and learning lessons from the Nordic region for the Government and policy makers.
Within the 156 countries covered, women hold only 26 percent of Parliamentary seats and 22 percent of Ministerial positions. India, in some ways, reflects this widening gap, where the number of Ministers declined from 23.1 percent in 2019 to 9.1 percent in 2021. The number of women in Parliament stands low at 14.4 percent. In India, the gender gap has widened to 62.5 %, down from 66.8% the previous year.
It is mainly due to women’s inadequate representation in politics, technical and leadership roles, a decrease in women’s labor force participation rate, poor healthcare, lagging female to male literacy ratio, and income inequality.
The gap is the widest on the political empowerment dimension, with economic participation and opportunity being next in line. However, the gap on educational attainment and health and survival has been practically bridged.
India is the third-worst performer among South Asian countries, with Pakistan and Afghanistan trailing and Bangladesh being at the top. The report states that the country fared the worst in political empowerment, regressing from 23.9% to 9.1%.
Its ranking on the health and survival dimension is among the five worst performers. The economic participation and opportunity gap saw a decline of 3% compared to 2020, while India’s educational attainment front is in the 114th position.
India has deteriorated to 51st place from 18th place in 2020 on political empowerment. Still, it has slipped to 155th position from 150th position in 2020 on health and survival, 151st place in economic participation and opportunity from 149th place, and 114th place for educational attainment from 112th.
In 2020 reports, among the 153 countries studied, India is the only country where the economic gender gap of 64.6% is larger than the political gender gap of 58.9%. In 2021 report, among the 156 countries, the economic gender gap of India is 67.4%, 3.8% gender gap in education, 6.3% gap in health and survival, and 72.4% gender gap in political empowerment. In health and survival, the gender gap of the sex ratio at birth is above 9.1%, and healthy life expectancy is almost the same.
Discrimination against women has also been reflected in Health and Survival subindex statistics. With 93.7% of this gap closed to date, India ranks among the bottom five countries in this subindex. The wide sex ratio at birth gaps is due to the high incidence of gender-based sex-selective practices. Besides, more than one in four women has faced intimate violence in her lifetime.The gender gap in the literacy rate is above 20.1%.
Yet, gender gaps persist in literacy : one-third of women are illiterate (34.2%) than 17.6% of men. In political empowerment, globally, women in Parliament is at 128th position and gender gap of 83.2%, and 90% gap in a Ministerial position. The gap in wages equality for similar work is above 51.8%. On health and survival, four large countries Pakistan, India, Vietnam, and China, fare poorly, with millions of women there not getting the same access to health as men.
The pandemic has only slowed down in its tracks the progress India was making towards achieving gender parity. The country urgently needs to focus on “health and survival,” which points towards a skewed sex ratio because of the high incidence of gender-based sex-selective practices and women’s economic participation. Women’s labour force participation rate and the share of women in technical roles declined in 2020, reducing the estimated earned income of women, one-fifth of men.
Learning from the Nordic region, noteworthy participation of women in politics, institutions, and public life is the catalyst for transformational change. Women need to be equal participants in the labour force to pioneer the societal changes the world needs in this integral period of transition.
Every effort must be directed towards achieving gender parallelism by facilitating women in leadership and decision-making positions. Social protection programmes should be gender-responsive and account for the differential needs of women and girls. Research and scientific literature also provide unequivocal evidence that countries led by women are dealing with the pandemic more effectively than many others.
Gendered inequality, thereby, is a global concern. India should focus on targeted policies and earmarked public and private investments in care and equalized access. Women are not ready to wait for another century for equality. It’s time India accelerates its efforts and fight for an inclusive, equal, global recovery.
India will not fully develop unless both women and men are equally supported to reach their full potential. There are risks, violations, and vulnerabilities women face just because they are women. Most of these risks are directly linked to women’s economic, political, social, and cultural disadvantages in their daily lives. It becomes acute during crises and disasters.
With the prevalence of gender discrimination, and social norms and practices, women become exposed to the possibility of child marriage, teenage pregnancy, child domestic work, poor education and health, sexual abuse, exploitation, and violence. Many of these manifestations will not change unless women are valued more.
[wptelegram-join-channel link=”https://t.me/s/upsctree” text=”Join @upsctree on Telegram”]2021 WEF Global Gender Gap report, which confirmed its 2016 finding of a decline in worldwide progress towards gender parity.
Over 2.8 billion women are legally restricted from having the same choice of jobs as men. As many as 104 countries still have laws preventing women from working in specific jobs, 59 countries have no laws on sexual harassment in the workplace, and it is astonishing that a handful of countries still allow husbands to legally stop their wives from working.
Globally, women’s participation in the labour force is estimated at 63% (as against 94% of men who participate), but India’s is at a dismal 25% or so currently. Most women are in informal and vulnerable employment—domestic help, agriculture, etc—and are always paid less than men.
Recent reports from Assam suggest that women workers in plantations are paid much less than men and never promoted to supervisory roles. The gender wage gap is about 24% globally, and women have lost far more jobs than men during lockdowns.
The problem of gender disparity is compounded by hurdles put up by governments, society and businesses: unequal access to social security schemes, banking services, education, digital services and so on, even as a glass ceiling has kept leadership roles out of women’s reach.
Yes, many governments and businesses had been working on parity before the pandemic struck. But the global gender gap, defined by differences reflected in the social, political, intellectual, cultural and economic attainments or attitudes of men and women, will not narrow in the near future without all major stakeholders working together on a clear agenda—that of economic growth by inclusion.
The WEF report estimates 135 years to close the gap at our current rate of progress based on four pillars: educational attainment, health, economic participation and political empowerment.
India has slipped from rank 112 to 140 in a single year, confirming how hard women were hit by the pandemic. Pakistan and Afghanistan are the only two Asian countries that fared worse.
Here are a few things we must do:
One, frame policies for equal-opportunity employment. Use technology and artificial intelligence to eliminate biases of gender, caste, etc, and select candidates at all levels on merit. Numerous surveys indicate that women in general have a better chance of landing jobs if their gender is not known to recruiters.
Two, foster a culture of gender sensitivity. Take a review of current policies and move from gender-neutral to gender-sensitive. Encourage and insist on diversity and inclusion at all levels, and promote more women internally to leadership roles. Demolish silos to let women grab potential opportunities in hitherto male-dominant roles. Work-from-home has taught us how efficiently women can manage flex-timings and productivity.
Three, deploy corporate social responsibility (CSR) funds for the education and skilling of women and girls at the bottom of the pyramid. CSR allocations to toilet building, the PM-Cares fund and firms’ own trusts could be re-channelled for this.
Four, get more women into research and development (R&D) roles. A study of over 4,000 companies found that more women in R&D jobs resulted in radical innovation. It appears women score far higher than men in championing change. If you seek growth from affordable products and services for low-income groups, women often have the best ideas.
Five, break barriers to allow progress. Cultural and structural issues must be fixed. Unconscious biases and discrimination are rampant even in highly-esteemed organizations. Establish fair and transparent human resource policies.
Six, get involved in local communities to engage them. As Michael Porter said, it is not possible for businesses to sustain long-term shareholder value without ensuring the welfare of the communities they exist in. It is in the best interest of enterprises to engage with local communities to understand and work towards lowering cultural and other barriers in society. It will also help connect with potential customers, employees and special interest groups driving the gender-equity agenda and achieve better diversity.