A tale from the banks of Ganga:-
Winters are extremely hectic for Sushma Patel, a vegetable grower in Uttar Pradesh’s Chunar town. Her farm is in the fertile plains of Ganga where people grow three crops a year. But this is the only season when she can grow vegetables. And before that, she needs to manually dig out shreds of plastic and wrappers from her one-hectare (ha) farm. “This is all because of the nullah,” she says, pointing at an open drain that runs through her field, carrying sewage from the neighbourhood to the Ganga. “Every monsoon, the drain overflows and inundates the field with a thick, black sludge and plastic debris. We cannot even go near the field as the stench of sewage fills the air,” she says. But Patel has no one to complain to as this is the way of life for most people in this ancient town.
About 70 per cent of the people in Chunar depend on toilets that have on-site sanitation, such as septic tanks and pits. In the absence of a proper disposal or management system, people simply dump the faecal sludge and septage in storm water drains running across the town. These 27 drains eventually discharge the untreated sewage into the Ganga and its tributary, the Jargo. On the way, they contaminate the groundwater and farmlands.
Such rampant discharge of untreated sewage into the Ganga prompted the National Green Tribunal (NGT) to issue show cause notices on May 18, 2016, to Chunar and four other municipalities —Mirzapur, Bhadohi, Fatehpur and Hastinapur—in Uttar Pradesh. NGT had asked the municipa lities to submit their plans to prevent untreated sewage flowing into the river.
Officials are since scrambling to abate the flow of sewage into the Ganga. “We have identified 10 ha along the Ganga to set up a sewage treatment plant (STP) with a capacity of treating 8 million litres of sewage a day (MLD). At present, Chunar generates 6 MLD of domestic sewage which goes directly into the river untreated,” says Shamsher Singh, sanitation inspector of Chunar Municipal Corporation. “We also plan to set up pumping stations at four places. These will intercept the drains and send the sewage to the proposed STP,” Singh says. But there is a problem. The town is surrounded by hills, which makes transportation of sewage to the proposed STP difficult. For instance, a huge drain passes through Aawas Colony, located at the foot of a hill. The municipal council plans to set up a pumping station along the drain. But it is not sure whether the station will be able to pump the sewage across the hill to the proposed STP.
Chunar, Mirzapur, Bhadohi, Fatehpur and Hastinapur are not the only towns along the Ganga struggling to manage their faecal load. Researchers with Delhi-based non-profit Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) say a major portion of the sewage generated by all the settlements along the 2,500-km-long bank of the Ganga ends up in the river—without any treatment.
The sheer volume of the untreated sewage flowing into the Ganga can be gauged from the fact that 25 per cent of the 400 million people living along it depend on on-site sanitation; there are at least 18 million septic tanks and 10 million pit latrines around the main stream of the Ganga, according to the Census 2011. More often than not people dispose of faecal sludge from these tanks and pits without any treatment.
The Report:-
A report on the pollution load in the Ganga, prepared by the Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB) in 2013, states that more than 6,087 MLD of wastewater flows into the Ganga from 138 drains. Experts say domestic sewage is a major constituent of this wastewater. The five states through which the main stream of the Ganga flows— Uttarakhand, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Jharkhand and West Bengal—have the capacity to treat only 1,208 MLD of sewage. Not to mention the Ganga is also a receptacle of 501 MLD of industrial wastewater.
The situation is only going to get worse with the implementation of Swachh Bharat Mission, the flagship programme of the Union government that aims to achieve an open defecation-free India by October 2, 2019. Under the mission, the government plans to construct 1.52 million toilets in rural areas along the Ganga and 1.45 million toilets (this includes private and public toilets) in cities that dot the river banks. These toilets will be built with four on-site sanitation technologies—septic tank, twin pits, biotoilet or biodigester.
This means by 2019, over 30 million tanks or pits would have been dug along the Ganga.
A back-of-the-envelope calculation by CSE shows these tanks and pits will produce 180 MLD of faecal sludge and septage. In the absence of a proper management system, this waste will eventually find its way into the Ganga. Pollution concentration in 180 MLD of septage is equivalent to that of 6,000 MLD of sewage.
The finding of CSE is alarming because the impact of the increasing number of toilets with- out any provision to treat the sludge is palpable across the Ganga. The level of faecal coliform, which indicates the extent of excreta in water, is increasing in the Ganga, and goes beyond the acceptable limit as the river crosses Kanpur in Uttar Pradesh, states the CPCB report. “High coliform levels make the water unsuitable for bathing and drinking,” says Javier Mateo Sagasta, senior researcher with the International Water Management Institute (IWMI), India.
“Unfortunately, faecal sludge and septage management do not find a mention in sanitation programmes like Swachh Bharat Mission,” says Suresh Kumar Rohilla, programme director of urban water management unit at CSE.
The load of faecal sludge and septage from millions of toilets, which are being installed along the Ganga under Swachh Bharat Mission, may defeat the government’s ambitious Namami Gange (National Mission for Clean Ganga).
Though the mission has identified varied projects, right from modernisation of ghats to construction of toilets and STPs in 118 target towns and cities, to arrest pollution in the river, it too gives faecal sludge and septage management a miss. “We plan to set up STPs to take care of sewage as well as faecal sludge,” says Shashi Shekhar, secretary with the Union Ministry of Water Resources, River Development and Ganga Rejuvenation. As of now, Namami Gange focuses on treatment of sewage, that too only from class-1 cities (that have over 100,000 population).
So far, the Atal Mission for Rejuvenation and Urban Transformation (AMRUT) is the only programme that requires cities to submit sewage and septage management plan. But it fails on two counts. First, AMRUT is restricted to class-1 cities. Second, it monitors urban local bodies’ performance based on their sewerage coverage. This discourages the authorities to prepare septage management plan.
“All Central, state and local programmes should recognise faecal waste management as a priority action area along the ongoing efforts to achieve healthy and clean cities in the Ganga basin,” says Rohilla. This is particularly important because a survey of cities along the Ganga shows that the authorities have miserably failed to manage their faecal waste.
Between October and November, CSE researchers visited 10 small- and medium-sized cities in Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and West Bengal that provide a snapshot of settlements across the Ganga basin. And the findings are startling. Of the 10 town and cities surveyed, only two (Ramnagar and Bijnor) have sewer lines. But they defeat the purpose as the authorities are yet to set up STPs. At least 60 per cent households in all the 10 towns and cities have toilets with on-site sanitation. But faecal sludge from these facilities are randomly dumped in vacant land, open drains, landfills and near water bodies. In West Bengal’s Bansberia and Bongaon cities, the authorities are in a fix. Almost all households in these cities have built toilets under Swachh Bharat Mission. “We have no idea how to dispose of the enormous volume of sludge these tanks and pits will produce in the coming years,” says Jagabandhu Saha, an official with Bongaon municipality.
Te tale of Lose-lose situation:-
In Uttar Pradesh’s Ramnagar town, 60-70 per cent households are connected to the sewer lines. Between November and June, when people in the region grow wheat, the irrigation department diverts the untreated sewage to farmers after diluting it. In fact, the irrigation department has set up a sewage pumping station and laid pipelines for this purpose. The urban local body has a vacuum tanker for cleaning out the septic tanks and pits. But it has been used only five to six times in two years as most septic tanks are inaccessible and emptied manually. More often than not, the faecal sludge is dumped in nearby fields and low-lying areas, from where it finds its way into the Ganga.
The situation is similar in the state’s Gangaghat town. Since the only vacuum tanker owned by the urban local body is too big to enter the narrow lanes, people contact private septage haulers from Kanpur. Residents say the tankers on their way back dump the untreated sewage at Railway Khanti, a low-lying area, or in the Chamak Ganga, a tributary of the Ganga whose flow has now been blocked due to construction activities. Years of dumping of faecal sludge has turned Railway Khanti and the Chamak Ganga into sewage pools.
Census 2011 states that some parts of Chunar are connected to sewer lines, but CSE researchers could not find any.
In Bijnor, people depend on five private septage haulers for emptying the tanks. Farmers have tied up with these tankers to provide them sludge, which they use as manure. The town is now shifting towards managing faecal waste in a centralised manner. The authorities have laid sewer lines and are setting up an STP. “Pollution in the Ganga can be fixed only through effective management of STPs,” says I P Singh, executive officer of Bijnor urban local body, adding that small STPs are cost-effective and efficient.
In Bihar’s Katihar and Buxar cities, municipal corporations provide vacuum tankers to clean out the septic tanks, but their responsibility ends there. The vacuum tanker of Katihar dumps the faecal sludge in a landfill at Udama Rakha. Since the landfill does not have a protective lining to check percolation of leachate, septage increases the risk of groundwater contamination. In Buxar, the vacuum tanker dumps the faecal sludge in open drains or on vacant land in nearby Darapur and Ahrauli villages.
When CSE researchers visited Bodhgaya, sewer lines were being laid in the town. But since households are yet to be connected to the network, its urban local body continues to clean the septic tanks and dump the septage on agricultural fields, often without the consent of the farmer.
Though Bongaon is likely to achieve open defecation-free status by the end of December 2016, people here have constructed large pits instead of septic tanks. This increases the risk of groundwater contamination with faecal matter. The municipa lity dumps septage in landfills, located next to a pond. This heightens the contamination risk of both groundwater and surface water.
In two of the cities surveyed, efforts are under way to manage the faecal sludge. Consider Bihar’s Muzaffarpur city. Most households here have toilets with on-site sanitation, and a fertiliser company is cashing in on it. Sona Ganga Fertilizers procures about 8 per cent of the septage from Muzaffarpur. It then dries and composts the waste and sells the biocompost to farmers.
A similar initiative is under way in Bansberia in partnership with the municipality. The municipality collects septage from 47 per cent of its households and transports it to the faecal sludge treatment plant (FSTP), set up under public-private partnership in 2006. A private company, Greenery Biocompost and Animal Farming, which runs the FSTP, recycles the sludge and converts it into biocompost. The company sells 50 kg of the biocompost for Rs 850.
These initiatives show the economic value of faecal sludge and septage, which can be converted into soil conditioners, unlike sewage. In the process, they create employment and encourage resource recovery and recycle. But in the absence of funding, guidelines and expertise, most urban local bodies turn a blind eye to the potential of faecal sludge and septage.
There is enough evidence to show that faecal sludge and septage management (FSSM) is not only economical as compared to centralised sewerage system but can also be implemented quickly to make cities clean and healthy.
IWMI’s recent study analyses the cost of faecal waste management in all 2,367 cities in the five states along the Ganga. It says effective management of faecal sludge and septage generated in these cities will cost US $2.8 billion (about Rs 18,900 crore), whereas laying sewerage networks and STPs will cost six times more—a whopping $17.4 billion (about Rs 117,400 crore). Besides, installing the sewerage system takes seven to eight years, whereas setting up an FSTP takes one to two years.
Sewerage system is also resource intensive. Unlike septic tanks, sewer networks involve large amounts of water. It can be laid by only those cities that supply 135 litres per capita a day—a dream for even most class-1 cities. “Using water to flush faecal matter is just a waste of precious resource,” says Rohilla. Since sewerage systems require electricity for pumping sewage to running STPs, they are not reliable in small towns and cities that face frequent power outages. On the contrary, FSTPs require little electricity as most are based on natural systems (see ‘Triple bonanza’).
| Triple bonanza
Faecal sludge management is not only cost-effective but also generates livelihood opportunities. Some technologies do not even require electricity Black soldier fly larvae: The technology uses larvae of a benign fly species, Hermetia illucens, to feed on the faecal matter. As the larvae grow and proliferate, they drastically reduce the volume of the waste within a couple of days and convert the dangerous pit material into a potentially useful soil conditioner or fertiliser. Once the larvae attain the prepupae stage, they can be harvested, processed to remove any possible pathogens and sold as animal feed. Because of high fat and protein content, there is an increasing demand for these animal feed. The technology is gaining ground in South Africa’s Ethekwini municipality. The country, which launched a sanitation programme similar to Swachh Bharat Mission in the 1990s, is innovating ways to dispose of the huge loads of faecal sludge and septage. Planted and unplanted drying bed: At a faecal sludge treatment plant, sludge is dried naturally in a sealed shallow pond with several layers of fliters and with evaporation facility. While this simple method can produce soil conditioners, one can plant wetland plants on the bed for efficient drying-up. It has an added advantage: the filters do not need to be desludged after each drying cycle. Fresh sludge can be directly applied onto the previous layer as the plants and their root systems maintain the porosity of the filter. Compared to unplanted drying beds, planted drying beds (also called humification beds), require desludging only once every five to 10 years and the removed sludge is a nutrient-rich soil conditioner. While Ghana has experimented with unplanted drying bed, planted drying bed is popular in Bangkok. |
Small wonder, several developing countries in Asia are taking steps to strengthen septage management. Consider the Philippines. About 40 per cent of the country’s population (including 85 per cent of the people in capital city Manila) use toilets that have septic tanks. Septage management is a main component in its Clean Water Act of 2004. The health department has also issued a manual guiding implementation of septage management programmes. Cities, such as Marikina and Dumaguete, have issued ordinances requiring regular desludging of septic tanks and have set up new FSTPs. In Malaysia, desludging at regular intervals is a must under federal law.
While India can follow in on the footsteps of these countries, it must ensure that people install on-site sanitation technologies suitable to the region’s geology. For example, people in Goa say none of the four sanitation technologies promoted under Swachh Bharat Mission is suitable for the region. The state receives heavy rainfall, has riverine areas, a high water table and a long sandy coastline. This makes it easy for faecal matter to seep through these twin pits and contaminate the groundwater. Septic tanks with soak pits also do not work as the partially treated effluent leaches through the soak pits. Biodigesters and biotoilets maybe suitable for the region, but they are expensive and people lack skills to construct, operate and maintain these toilets.
Connecting health issues with pollution in river
FSSM has its advantages. It is effective in unplanned areas—a common phenomenon in all towns in the Ganga basin. It can work seamlessly with sewers. For example, local urban bodies can include faecal sludge management alongside sewerage plan in Master Plans, City Development Plans and Swachh City or City Sanitation Plans.
All they need is guidance to upgrade on-site sanitation systems as per prescribed standards and bye-laws, to regularise private vacuum tankers and to operate and maintain FSTP. They should also be encouraged to tie up with private companies in managing faecal sludge. In Bangladesh, non-profit WaterAid Bangladesh and its partners the Bangladesh Association for Social Advancement are working with the Shakipur municipality to run a co-compost plant that uses both faecal sludge and organic waste to make compost.Researchers with the IWMI say cities that have sewerage systems in place should set up a plant that can treat both sewage and faecal sludge.
Cities that do not have a sewerage system and have a water supply level above 80 litres per capita a day (lpcd) should have a simplified sewer system to convey effluents from septic tanks, which can then be treated in a decentralised manner. The faecal sludge can be treated at FSTP. Co-composting can also be considered. Cities that have less than 80 lpcd water supply can treat faecal sludge by using microphytes in wetlands. They can also consider co-composting if the municipality collects solid waste.
“More than anything else, public awareness should be created,” says Nagendra Kumar, an official with Gangaghat Nagar Palika Parishad. “We cannot achieve anything without the cooperation of people,” he says. Agrees Rohilla. Ganga can be cleaned and city-wide sanitation can be achieved only if the government, civil society and people recognise faecal sludge management as a complementary solution along with the sewerage system. The need of the day is to connect water, sanitation and public health issues with abatement of pollution in river.
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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.