UN court rejects disarmament case against India
The United Nations’ highest court recently rejected nuclear disarmament cases filed by the Pacific nation of the Marshall Islands against Britain, India and Pakistan, saying it did not have jurisdiction.
The International Court of Justice ruled that the Marshall Islands had failed to prove that a legal dispute over disarmament existed between it and the three nuclear powers before the case was filed in 2014, and that “consequently the court lacks jurisdiction.”
Casting vote
It took a casting vote by the court’s President Ronny Abraham to break an eight-eight deadlock between the 16 judges on the question of jurisdiction in the case against Britain.
In the cases against India and Pakistan, the margin was nine-seven.
Phon van den Biesen, a Dutch lawyer who represented the Marshall Islands, said he was deeply disappointed by the rulings.
Mr. Abraham acknowledged that the Marshall Islands had a particular interest in nuclear disarmament “by virtue of the suffering which its people endured as a result of it being used as a site for extensive nuclear testing programmes.”
Marshall Islands representative Tony deBrum said he watched one of the U.S. nuclear tests in his home country as a 9-year-old boy while fishing with his grandfather.
“The entire sky turned blood red,” he told judges in an emotional speech. He said some of his country’s islands were “vaporised” by the tests.
The Marshall Islands originally filed cases against all nine nations that have declared or are believed to possess nuclear weapons: the U.S., Russia, Britain, France, China, India, Pakistan, Israel and North Korea. But only the cases against Britain, India and Pakistan got to the preliminary stage of proceedings.
In a landmark 1996 advisory opinion, the court said that using or threatening to use nuclear arms would “generally be contrary to” the laws of war and humanitarian law. But it added that it could not definitively rule on whether the threat or use of nuclear weapons would be legal “in an extreme circumstance of self-defence, in which the very survival of a state would be at stake.”
The judges in 1996 also unanimously stated that there is a legal obligation “to pursue in good faith” nuclear disarmament talks.
Mohalla Clinics in Delhi
Provision of primary healthcare system has been a big challenge in Indian healthcare system. The need for a functioning primary healthcare system, which can be accessible within a reasonable geographical distance, has been recognised long back in 1970s. The Alma Ata declaration (1978) and India’s National Health Policy of 1983 and 2002 had accepted the importance of a functioning primary healthcare system.
Absence of a functioning primary healthcare system leads to large proportion of patients with common illness turning to secondary and tertiary care institutions for treatment. This results in overcrowding, long hours of wait, poor quality of service delivery, etc. Finally these patients end up in consulting non-qualified doctors or private doctors with out-of-pocket expenditure. The tertiary healthcare systems neither have time nor resources to handle every common illness.
Mohalla Clinics in Delhi
The Delhi government has come up with an innovative concept called Mohalla clinics. The concept was announced in the state budget for 2015-16, and the aim was to set up 500 such clinics in the first year.
Each clinic will have a doctor, a nurse, a pharmacist, and a laboratory technician.At a later stage, the clinics would be provided with specialist doctors. The clinic will take care of primary healthcare needs of people living within a kilometre of it.
The services provided by them include outpatient consultations, immunisation, free medicines and diagnostics, family planning, referral and counselling services.
Each Mohalla clinic is linked to polyclinics (multi-speciality clinics) for logistical support and also for referral of patients who needs specialist care.
The concept of Mohalla clinic has a number of advantages. These clinics would increase the geographical access to healthcare services and reduces the travelling time and waiting time at the health facilities.
Majority of patients feels uneasy in approaching big health facilities until they become seriously ill. The easy access provided by the Mohalla clinics would encourage patients to approach the clinics during early stage of the illness. Patients spend around 70% of the health expenditure on medicines and diagnostics.
The provision of free medicines and 50 diagnostic services at free of cost would considerably reduce the healthcare expenditure for poor people.
The easy access would also reduce the transportation cost and waiting time (opportunity cost of missing work). The rising burden of non-communicable diseases among poor would require lot of preventive care. T
he patients with hypertension and diabetes would require free medicines and also counselling services. The counselling services provided at Mohalla clinics would attract the patients to access those services. An effective referral service from these clinics would help the patients.
The cost for setting up of such clinics would be much less than the cost for setting up of a secondary hospital.
The one disadvantage with the concept of Mohalla clinics is they may not work in rural areas, which are low population density areas. The potential challenges in running of Mohalla clinics would be monitoring the working of 500 such clinics. There is a chance of abuse of drugs as they are easily accessible.
Maintaining of medicine stocks at so many locations would be a challenge. However, use of technologies like CCTV’s, IT solutions for inventory management, providing necessary skills to staff, use of biometric IDs to track patients, tie up with local NGos, etc. can help in facing the challenges.
The mohalla clinic concept is well designed than earlier healthcare interventions. The other state governments can study the concept of neighbourhood clinics and take up the pilot projects in Metros and other big urban areas.
Need to adopt prefab tech to provide housing for all
The Centre plans to provide housing for all by 2022 and one of the ways to achieve this goal is to go for ‘prefab’ technology.
Prefabrication is the practice of assembling components of a structure in a factory or other manufacturing site, and transporting complete assemblies or sub-assemblies to the construction site where the structure is to be located.
The term is used to distinguish this process from the more conventional construction practice of transporting the basic materials to the construction site where all assembly is carried out.
The term prefabrication also applies to the manufacturing of things other than structures at a fixed site. It is frequently used when fabrication of a section of a machine or any movable structure is shifted from the main manufacturing site to another location, and the section is supplied assembled and ready to fit. It is not generally used to refer to electrical or electronic components of a machine, or mechanical parts such as pumps, gearboxes and compressors which are usually supplied as separate items, but to sections of the body of the machine which in the past were fabricated with the whole machine. Prefabricated parts of the body of the machine may be called ‘sub-assemblies’ to distinguish them from the other components.
“Hide Special Forces’ signature”
Army officers were reluctant to share operational details of the September 29 cross-LoC surgical strikes with the public. “The only beneficiary of the information would be the adversary,” said an official.
Portuguese ex-PM to be the new UN chief
Former Portuguese Prime Minister Antonio Guterres is poised to be the next United Nations Secretary-General and is expected to be formally recommended to the 193-member General Assembly for election by the Security Council on Thursday, diplomats said.
Russia’s UN Ambassador Vitaly Churkin, president of the 15-member council for October, said he hoped the council would unanimously recommend Mr. Guterres, who was also the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees from June 2005 to December 2015. Mr. Guterres will replace Ban Ki-moon of South Korea, who will step down at the end of 2016 after serving two terms.
The Security Council will adopt a resolution, traditionally behind closed doors, recommending that the General Assembly appoint Mr. Guterres for a five-year term from Jan. 1, 2017. The resolution needs nine votes in favour and no vetoes to pass.
3 share Chemistry Nobel for molecular machines
A trio of French, British and Dutch scientists won the Nobel Chemistry Prize recently for developing molecular machines, the world’s smallest machines that may one day act as artificial muscles to power tiny robots or even prosthetic limbs.
Jean-Pierre Sauvage of France, J. Fraser Stoddart of Britain and Bernard Feringa of the Netherlands “have developed molecules with controllable movements, which can perform a task when energy is added”.
Inspired by proteins that naturally act as biological machines within cells, these synthetic copies are usually constructed of a few molecules fused together.
Also called nanomachines or nanobots, they can be put to work as tiny motors, ratchets, pistons or wheels to produce mechanical motion in response to stimuli such as light or temperature change.
Molecular machines can move objects many time their size. The three laureates will share the eight million Swedish kronor (around $933,000) prize equally.
The first step towards a molecular machine was taken by Mr. Sauvage in 1983, when he succeeded in linking together two ring-shaped molecules to form a chain.
Mr. Sauvage (71) is currently the director of research emeritus at France’s National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS).
The second step was taken by Mr. Stoddart in 1991, when he threaded a molecular ring onto a thin molecular axle and demonstrated that the ring was able to move along the axle.
Mr. Stoddart (74) is a professor of Chemistry at Northwestern University in the U.S.
Mr. Feringa (65) was meanwhile the first person to develop a molecular motor — in 1999 he was able to make a molecular rotor blade to spin continually in the same direction.
Using molecular motors, he has also designed a nanocar. He is currently a professor at the University of Groningen
Also called nanobots, these tiny machines can be put to work as motors, ratchets, pistons or wheels
Automation threatens 69% jobs in India: World Bank
Automation threatens 69 per cent of the jobs in India, while 77 per cent in China, according to a World Bank research which has said that technology could fundamentally disrupt the pattern of traditional economic path in developing countries.
As we continue to encourage more investment in infrastructure to promote growth, we also have to think about the kinds of infrastructure that countries will need in the economy of the future. We all know that technology has and will continue to fundamentally reshape the world.
But the traditional economic path from increasing productivity of agriculture to light manufacturing and then to full-scale industrialisation may not be possible for all developing countries.
In large parts of Africa, it is likely that technology could fundamentally disrupt this pattern. Research based on World Bank data has predicted that the proportion of jobs threatened in India by automation is 69 per cent, in China it is 77 per cent and in Ethiopia, the percentage of jobs threatened by automation is 85 per cent.
A burning issue crops up in Delhi
The Delhi government has written to Punjab and Rajasthan to not allow the practice of burning crops this year and look for other alternatives. Delhi has taken up the issue of crop burning due to its detrimental effects on air quality.
Pollution arising from burning of crops is a major factor behind the heavy smog in the Capital.
As per a recent WHO report on Air Pollution, Delhi is the second-most polluted city in the country after Gwalior in Madhya Pradesh.
Last year, the Punjab Pollution Control Board had directed its staff to take action against farmers involved in the illegal practice of burning paddy straw. The practise is common among farmers, who clear their fields at the end of the harvest season.
Despite the board stating that it poses serious threat to the environment and health of people, the practice continues.
Manibhadra Project
Mahanadi Godavari Link Project envisages construction of a storage reservoir on Mahanadi River at Manibhadra and a link canal from this reservoir to the Godavari River.
The Mahanadi-Godavari link will originate from Barmul dam at FSL 75.00m with all the design features of conveyance system as proposed in the FR of Mahanadi-Godavari link and additional length of 14 km. Thus the total length of the link canal be 842 km. Six dam projects at Salki and Ong in Ong sub-basin and Uttei Roul Integrated Project, Khadago, Udanti and Tel Integrated Project in Tel sub-basin in Mahanadi basin will be included in the Mahanadi – Godavari Flood moderation scheme. The six dam projects will utillise 1162 MCM of water within Odisha State. The submergence from Barmul dam will be 13768 ha. and from six dam projects will be 10222 ha. Thus total submergence shall be about 23990 ha.
Projected Benefits:
The Mahanadi – Godavari flood Moderation Project shall provide irrigation to the tune of 3.21 lakh ha. in Odisha through link canal and 1.82 lakh ha. through six dam projects. Thus total irrigation in Odisha shall be 5.03 lakh ha.
It is proposed to provide 125 MCM water for drinking water supply. The six dam projects have a potential of generating 240 MW hydro power. There will be flood moderation in Mahanadi river basin. The proposal prepared is preliminary based on remote sensing studies and will be firmed up by detailed studies.
Murga bags Swachh Bharat short film award
Young filmmaker Katyayan Shivpuri, from Maharashtra, won the first prize at the Swachh Bharat Short Film Festival for his work Murga..
The short film promoting the idea of clean India had Murga as the metaphor depicting the victims that citizens have made of themselves and of the children by not keeping the surroundings clean.
China blocks tributary of Brahmaputra to build dam
China has blocked a tributary of the Brahmaputra as part of a major hydro-electric project, whose construction began in 2014.
The state-run Xinhua news agency is reporting that the blockage of a tributary of the Yarlung Zangbo river is part of China’s “most expensive” hydro project.
The Brahmaputra in its upper reaches is called Yarlung Zangbo, after it originates from the Angsi glacier in western Tibet, southeast of Mount Kailash and Mansarovar Lake.
Impact on India
Shigatse, a railhead of the Qinghai-Tibet railway, is a few hours driving distance away from the junction of Bhutan and Sikkim. It is also the city from where China intends to extend its railway towards Nepal.
It is as yet unclear whether the dam will have any impact on water flows towards India and Bangladesh — the two riparian states that are drained by the Brahmaputra.
So far, China has maintained that its dams do not restrict the flow of water towards India as they are based on run-of-the river principle.
Ambitious hydro power plans
China’s 13th five year plan has proposed significant hydropower expansion along rivers that also originate in the Tibetan plateau. Although the plan does not mention any river specifically, it is anticipated that the new dams are envisaged along the Yarlung Zangbo, Lancang (Mekong) and Nu (Salween), all originating in the Tibetan plateau.
Analysts say that aware of the downstream impact of dams along trans-boundary rivers, the plan document underscored need to “scientifically develop and harness international rivers” and “deepen cooperation with other riparian countries / along the rivers.”
2013 MoU
India and China have set up an Expert Level Mechanism on trans-border rivers. In 2013, they signed a memorandum of understanding on trans-border rivers, under which China has been supplying data to India on water flows.
Relieve judiciary of avoidable burden: CJI
Chief Justice of India T.S. Thakur on Saturday urged the Law Ministry to devise a mechanism to relieve the judicial system of the “avoidable burden” arising out of “sheer apathy, indifference or incapacity” of the government and its departments to take certain decisions.
He also asked the government to set up a panel, comprising former judges, to decide whether or not to fight a case against any citizen when the issue could be resolved outside court.
He was speaking at the launch of a theme song for the National Legal Services Authority (NALSA) . The NALSA was constituted under the Legal Services Authorities Act, 1987, to provide free legal services to the weaker sections.
Minister of Law and Justice Ravi Shankar Prasad, who addressed the inaugural session of ‘National Consultation on Challenges in Mediation and Way Forward’, proposed the digitalisation of 622 district NALSA centres to make them more efficient and effective.
‘Help acid attack victims’
He also asked the NALSA to help the victims of acid attacks. “I would recommend that victims of acid attack also be taken on a priority basis by framing a special scheme for them,” he said.
Senior Supreme Court Judge and NALSA executive chairman Justice A.R. Dave said mediation was the best way to resolve a dispute in the alternate dispute redress system.
Recent Posts
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.