The ancient Indus Valley.
Snapshot
The discovery of the cities of Mohenjo-daro and Harappa in the early twentieth century, was the greatest archaeological feat in Indian History. It not only brought an ancient civilisation to light, but also pushed the antiquity of India back by several millennia. However, there were other discoveries, prior to the excavation of Harappan civilisation, which changed the way Indian history was perceived. These discoveries were results of scholarship, imperial rivalries and chance encounters. Together, these discoveries extended the influence of ancient India, far beyond its territories.
The Enterprising India
One of the earliest such discovery was the Periplus of the Erythraean Sea. The document has been around since 1533, as a translation of an earlier manuscript. However, in 1800, William Vincent, the Dean of Westminster, published the translation of the Periplus, with his commentary and historically corroborated date of the document. The Periplus is now believed to have written in the middle of first century by a sailor or a merchant, as a first-hand account.
The document records direct trade relations between Roman Egypt and India. At the time of its writing, the trade from ports of Egypt was conducted by up to 120 ships every year, setting sail to India, following the monsoon winds. Barygaza (modern Bharuch in Gujarat) and Muziris (in modern Kerala) feature prominently in the Periplus. The recent discovery of the port of Muziris, mentioned in the Periplus, in Kodungallur, corroborates the records. Large hordes of Roman coins have been found in various places in Kerala and as far away as in Tamil Nadu, suggesting brisk Roman trade with India. The Periplusapart from telling us about a direct trade route between India and Egypt, also suggests that India was a major international export hub since early centuries of the Common Era. The need to lower the cost of imports, made the Romans, study the monsoon patterns, bypass the Arab intermediaries and establish direct trade contacts with the Indians.
The Zero And Ancient Mathematics
The second discovery was the Bakhshali manuscript. It was found in 1881, in the village of Bakhshali, Mardan (modern Pakistan). The manuscript was discovered by a villager while he was digging a stone enclosure. Along with the manuscript he also discovered an earthen lamp, a pencil and an earthen pot with perforated bottom. Having no formal training in archaeological excavation, much of the manuscript was lost while the villager pulled it out, from the enclosure. It was handed over to the assistant commissioner of Mardan and it eventually reached the Oxford University in 1902. The manuscript is written in Sharada script and deals in mathematical subjects like algebra, geometry and mensuration. However, the most important discovery in the manuscript was the use of zero as a number.
Until recently, it was believed that the first recorded evidence of use of zero dated back to mid ninth century in a temple in Gwalior. The Bakhshali manuscript was not dated until 2017. Scholars debated the date of its writing and assigned it a date between third and twelfth centuries, with most Western scholars favouring a later date. The zero in the manuscript is represented by a single dot. While rest of the world now uses the modern symbol for zero, the Arabs still use the dot. This is probably because the Arabs borrowed the Indic numerals when zero in India was still represented by a single dot. The Oxford University, after more than a century of acquiring it, decided to carbon date the manuscript, in 2017. It was found that the earliest dates of recorded zero now go back to the third century. This has pushed back the use of zero by almost 500 years than previously thought.
A Transnational Civilisation
The third discovery was that of the Bower manuscript. Discovered in 1890, in Kucha in Chinese Turkestan (modern Xinjiang), the manuscript was discovered by local treasure hunters. They sold it to a local haji, Ghulam Qadir. He in turn sold a part of it to a British Lieutenant, Hamilton Bower. The manuscript, written in late Brahmi script, was a Sanskrit text on Ayurveda, divination and incantation. Based on the language and script, the manuscript was dated to the Gupta Age. More than the contents of the manuscript, it was the location that baffled the historians. Not much was known about Chinese Turkestan back in 1890 and no one knew that it was a major oasis on the ancient Silk Road. Finding an Indian text, deep in the Taklamakan desert was a proof that ancient India had flourishing trade and cultural contacts with China. This was the first time that hard evidence was available on India’s influence beyond the Karakoram. The discovery and translation of Bower’s manuscript, as it came to be known, was path breaking. It led to a race among the major European powers to collect antiquities from Central Asia and more evidence of Indian influence by means of trade and dispersal of Buddhism came to the fore.
Setting The Kushan Record Straight
The fourth discovery is recent, but had significant impact on dating of the ancient history of India. In 1993, Afghanistan was fighting a bitter civil war, following the Russian withdrawal. A mujahideen, while digging a trench, in a village called Rabatak, discovered a stone slab with inscriptions. In a war torn country, where rival camps were trying to establish an Islamic state, taking care of the antiquities was not a priority. However, the slab, somehow reached the local commander, Sayyidjaffar Nadiri. He asked a British aid worker to take a video of the slab and send it to London. The video reached Professor Nicholas Sims-Williams at the British Museum and he did the first translation. However, parts of it could not be translated since the professor has not seen the actual inscription. While the inscription was lying at the commander’s house, fighting intensified and his house was sacked. No one knew where the inscription was.
In 2000, Dr Jonathan Lee, a specialist in Afghan history, who had seen the inscription on a previous occasion, returned to Afghanistan. He wanted to find the inscription and give it another read. However, between his last visit and year 2000, much had changed. The mujahideen were no longer tolerant of pre-Islamic antiquities. In the very next year the Bamyan Buddha would be destroyed by the Taliban. Upon inquiry, Dr Lee was given multiple versions of what could have happened to the inscription, including it been sold off in London. However, it was eventually found in a depot of the Department of Mines, in Pul-i-Khumri. Upon its full reading the correct genealogy of the Kushans were established and correct dates were assigned to their rule.
The inscription gives some valuable information on the administration of the Kushans. After settling down, the Kushans discontinued Greek and adopted Bactrian as their administrative language. Kanishka, in whose name the inscription is issued, invokes Persian, Indian and local Bactrian gods, to establish his credentials as a son of the soil. He also gives the chronological detail of his lineage, thus settling the debate around Kushan chronology. We also see the Persian influence of assigning grand titles to kings, in the inscription. Kanishka calls himself, “king of kings”, a translation of pre-Islamic Persian term, Shahenshah.
Together, these discoveries contributed in enriching the ancient Indian history. In some cases, like that of the Bower Manuscript, they also changed the history of far off places. It was the discovery of the Bower Manuscript that led to further discoveries in the Taklamakan, which eventually recreated the ancient trade route, now known as the Silk Road. The manuscripts in China, Buddhism in Japan, Indian Cinnamon in Exodus (30:23) and the Hindu/Buddhist kingdoms of Southeast Asia, all tell us a story. That India in the ancient time was the commercial and cultural hub of the then known world. The modern equivalent being the United States. But unlike US, ancient India commanded power and respect based entirely on its soft power.
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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.