Publish FIRs online within 24 hours: SC :-
Upholding the right of an accused to information and putting a check on the authority of the police to deprive a person of his liberty, the Supreme Court recently ordered States and Union Territories to upload, on police or government websites, First Information Reports (FIRs) within 24 hours of their registration in police stations.
A Bench of Justices Dipak Misra and C. Nagappan directed the implementation of this step to usher in transparency in police work. It said an accused had every right to know what he was accused of. “Where liberty of a person is at stake and the criminal law is set in motion, the accused should have all the information,” the Bench observed.
It said access to the FIR would help the accused prepare his defence and “seek redressal of his grievances.”
The court order came on a writ petition by the Youth Bar Association of India earlier this year seeking such a direction to the Union government, States and UTs.
The Bench however exempted from publication FIRs in certain cases. These include cases of insurgency, child abuse, sexual offences and terrorism. The FIRs registered in these categories would continue to be away from the public eye owing to issues of privacy and national interest. The court agreed to a submission by Additional Solicitor General Tushar Mehta, for the Centre, that the list of such sensitive cases should be illustrative and not exhaustive.
The decision to not post the FIRs in such cases would be taken by a police officer not below the rank of a Deputy Superintendent of Police or the District Magistrate, either of whom would have to communicate the decision to the jurisdictional magistrate.
In case of complaint against such non-publication of FIRs, the Superintendent of Police in rural areas and Police Commissioner in metros, will form a committee of three officers, which will decide on the complaint in three weeks.
In areas where Internet access is limited, the Bench extended the deadline for publishing the FIR on websites to 48 hours, which can still further be stretched to a maximum of 72 hours. Accused persons cannot take advantage of delay in uploading of FIRs and seek anticipatory bail on that ground, the court specified.
The Delhi HC in its judgment on December 6, 2010, had upheld the right of the accused to get copies of FIRs even before the local Magistrate ordered the police to do so under Section 207 of the Code of Criminal Procedure.
ACs – Environmental Criminals ?
The now increasingly ubiquitous air-conditioner (AC) in our houses would easily make it to the list of the top environmental criminals.
Why?
Just consider these facts. In Delhi, a mere 1°C drop in temperature leads to a 400 MW drop in demand for electricity.
This is because ACs account for some 30 per cent of Delhi’s electricity demand and over 60 per cent of its peak demand, according to the data of the Bureau of Energy Efficiency (BEE).
In fact, the peak demand hour for electricity is changing. Now instead of evening—traditionally this is when people reach home and switch on lights—it is late afternoon. This is when the household and commercial electricity-usage hour is coinciding.
So it is ACs that determine electricity demand and will determine energy efficiency and security.
So how efficient are the ACs sold in India?
More importantly, if they are rated to be energy-efficient do they perform as efficiently?
Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) decided to find out by getting branded ACs rated five-star by BEE tested for performance. The tests reveal that there was a dip of 2.5 per cent in energy efficiency for every degree rise in temperature. In this way, a five-star AC performed worse than a one-star AC when temperature was 45°C.
Why does this happen?
Quite simply because we have adopted test standards that do not suit our temperatures. The International Organization for Standardization has three different standards for testing the performance of ACs: mild, cold and hot weather conditions.
India’s ISI standard has been derived from this, but by adopting mild weather conditions. This means ACs are rated for energy efficiency based on their performance in 35°C ambient temperature and 27°C inside.
The same machine is also tested under maximum (46°C) conditions, but this is not to determine its energy efficiency. In this way, when you buy your AC, remember BEE/BIS, which sets the standard, has only certified that it will work with certain efficiency when the temperature outside is 35°C.
This is when the National Building Code (NBC) data shows that out of the 60 cities surveyed, 41 cities, including Delhi, had temperatures over 35°C for 175 hours in a year—these are hours that determine peak loads.
This is bound to increase, with heat islands growing in cities because of concrete and micro-climatic changes. Clearly, the testing method needs to be changed.
But this is not all that determines the energy efficiency of ACs. In 2006, BEE started its energy standards and labelling programme.
In 2010, energy-efficiency standards for ACs, set in terms of the energy-efficiency ratio, were made mandatory and the last revision was in 2014. What is shocking is that Indian AC standards remain way below global benchmarks.
The specious argument is that we are a poor country, and so, I assume, we should continue to be swamped with outdated technologies by Indian and multinational companies. Last heard BEE was “revising” these standards upwards but the revision is delayed. So the AC energy-efficiency standard, which was to expire in 2016, is now notified by BEE to continue till 2018.
Worse, when BEE “certifies” that an AC is star-rated, it does this based on the manufacturer’s self or third party efficiency report. Amazing trust! Amazing regulations!
This is not all in the AC story. The usage of these machines has to do with us and our idea of comfort. According to NBC, thermal comfort lies in the temperature zone between 25°C and 30°C, with optimal conditions at 27.5°C.
What is never told is what will happen to the energy efficiency of our machines and their operating cost if we crank down temperatures.
CSE’s study found that running ACs at low temperatures of 20°C has huge energy penalties—2 per cent drop in the energy efficiency ratio for every degree temperature lowered below the 27.5°C optimal comfort level. In this way, the performance of a five-star AC becomes equal to that of a two- or three-star AC when we run it at 20°C, normal for most of us.
This is also because comfort is determined, not just by what we set AC temperature at, but also by the amount of ventilation we have and, of course, the clothes we wear. If you work your air-conditioner with a conventional room fan your comfort goes up, simply because there is more breeze, hence more thermal comfort.
But who designs modern buildings with ventilation? This is the age of sealed and centrally air-conditioned buildings. Fans are considered not-so-cool. In lifestyles we have been sold as modern, it is the wow factor that works and we over-cool our spaces and then wear climate-inappropriate clothes—suits and ties in summers.
If we are really cool then let’s get AC maths and our clothes right. That is the real energy game-changer.
Maharashtra gives reserved forests status to mangroves
Maharashtra has notified 15,087.6 hectares of mangroves across the state as reserved forest, becoming the first state in the country to do so. The notification, however, comes over a decade after Bombay High Court asked the state government to declare mangroves as forests in 2005.
As per a Forest Survey of India report of 2013, mangroves constitute around 462,800 hectares or 0.14 per cent of India’s land area, with Sundarbans in West Bengal accounting for almost half of it. As per the report, six of Maharashtra’s districts have mangrove cover: Mumbai city, Mumbai suburbs, Raigarh, Ratnagiri, Sindhudurg and Thane. Raigarh has the largest mangrove cover at 6,200 hectares.
Mangroves are a salt-tolerant plant community found in tropical and sub-tropical regions that receive high rainfall. Increasing industrial activity in coastal areas are negatively affecting mangrove forests, making their conservation essential, said a Forest Survey of India report.
Google Think-tank and Counter ISIS’s Online Propaganda
Few months ago , a noted scholar , observed that , that propaganda can not be stopped, instead what is needed is not to stop the propaganda which is technically impossible , but the bast way forward to stop terrorist recruitment propaganda is to do counter propaganda.It is best to beat them in their own game technically than to play hide and seek under the veil of law.
Although tech firms have been labouring for years to counter ISIS’ digital propaganda machine, the latter has set a new standard for aggressive online recruitment. Twitter has suspended several accounts only to see them arise again while other services like YouTube and Facebook have fought an endless war of content removal to keep the group’s videos offline. Entering this scenario to help is Jigsaw, the Google-owned tech incubator and think tank, recently known as Google Ideas.
Jigsaw has been working over the past year to advance a new program which will use a blend of Google’s search advertising algorithms and YouTube’s video platform to target aspiring ISIS recruits in order to deter them from joining the group.
The program, termed the Redirect Method and about to be launched in a new phase this month, places advertising alongside results for any keywords and phrases that Jigsaw has determined people attracted to ISIS commonly search for.However to persuade the people already drawn into ISIS, instead of creating anti-ISIS messages Jigsaw curates them from YouTube.
In the previous two months, more than 300,000 people were drawn to the anti-ISIS YouTube channels. The viewers spent more than twice as long watching the most effective playlists than the best estimates of how long people view YouTube as a whole.
Jigsaw picked more than 1,700 keywords that activated ads leading to the anti-ISIS playlists. The selected terms are believed to be the ones searched by the most committed ISIS recruits including phrases like “jihad in Syria” along with names of extremist leaders who had preached ISIS recruitment. The ads, however, took a light-touch approach, with phrases like “Is ISIS Legitimate?” or “Want to Join ISIS?” rather than obvious anti-ISIS messages.
Redirect Method, is not meant to track potential ISIS recruits for arrest, the main intention being education. Jigsaw in that sense is fighting the battle of countering the jihadi indoctrination to prevent the rise of recruits in ISIS
A heart-shaped grassland in the heart of India
The Indian Remote Sensing (IRS) satellites, put into orbit since 1988 by Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO), have been used extensively in monitoring and management of natural resources.
IRS satellite images, at times, bring out captivating appearance of landforms reiterating the beauty of our country. One such image is of LISS-4 picture that reflects a ‘heart’ shaped landscape amidst the swaying grasslands of Kanha National park in the Mandla district of Madhya Pradesh.
Kanha National Park became a Tiger Reserve in 1974 and consists of open grasslands which sprung up in fields of abandoned villages. The area has many species of grass, some of which are important for the survival of Barahsingha(Stag).
Kanha is home to more than one thousand species of flowering plants, which, one should ideally have the pleasure of seeing in real between November to June when the National Park welcomes its human visitors.
Grassland are known by myriad names across the world – prairies (US Mideast), pampas (South America), steppes (Central Eurasia), savannas (Africa) and so on.
A land where grass is the most dominant vegetation is a designated area that transitions between the forests and the desert; primarily a land, which receives neither too much nor too little rainfall. Open and fairly flat, grasslands are of two types: tropical and temperate. Tropical grasslands are warm all year round but the temperate ones are more dry and windy.
In India grasslands are found at various altitudes and in many geographical regions under disparate climatic conditions. Each of these grasslands has their own distinct characteristics. The most widespread are Imperata grasslands. The majority of the grass species found in India belong to Andropogoneae (30 per cent), Paniceae (15 per cent), and Eragrosteae (9 per cent) sub-groups. Home to some of the most endangered and endemic species including antelopes, tigers, bears, Indian leopard and bustard, India’s grasslands also abound in a large variety of bamboo.
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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.