The Supreme Court ruling reiterating that private unaided schools in Delhi built on land provided by the government must take permission for fee hike has been met with sharply polarised reactions.
On one side are the Delhi government, the community of parents and those who are not in favour of free markets, who see the order as a victory. On the other side is the community of private schools, which sees the order as an attack on its autonomy; it is not prepared to concede defeat and insists there are still legal options open.
But the over-the-top rejoicing is a tad misplaced. The order does not mean that all unaided private schools in Delhi will have to take permission from the Delhi government for fee hikes. Of the 2,000-odd private schools in Delhi, only around 400 have got land from the government at institutional rates (which are lower than the market rate). Of these 400, says S K Bhattacharya, chairperson of the Action Committee of Unaided Recognised Private Schools, only 295 have got the land along with the stipulation about taking government permission before fee increases. So these schools do not have the right to complain; if they had agreed to the condition when they got the land, they have to abide by it now. Contractual obligations have to be met; the Supreme Court and, before that, the Delhi High Court were only reiterating this point.
The remaining 105 unaided private schools which have got land at institutional rates but without this stipulation as well as the nearly 1,600 schools which have been set up on private land – either owned by the founders or bought at market rates – are not legally bound to get a government go ahead for fee hikes. The court order does not apply to them.
What could apply to all private unaided schools in Delhi is the Delhi School (Verification of Accounts and Refund of Excess Fee) Act enacted in December 2015. But the Act has not got presidential assent, so right now only 295 unaided private schools are affected.
But this isn’t just about Delhi alone. The order feeds into the entrenched mindset that education should not be about business at all and that most private schools are teaching shops that need to be kept in line by a big stick-wielding government. This is a flawed attitude that needs to change.
Those who rail against commercialisation of education limit their rants to schools, but quietly pay up the private tutors and tuition agencies which can be as exploitative as private schools. There is no lament about commercialisation when school teachers openly solicit their own students for after-school private tuitions, no calls for the government to regulate tuition centres. This contradictory attitude just doesn’t strike them.
This is not the first time that the courts have come down against fee hikes. In 2004, in the Modern School vs Union of India case, the Supreme Court held that the Delhi government had the right to regulate tuition fees charged by private unaided schools. It went a step further and even put conditions on schools with more than one branch transferring funds from one branch to another.
What accompanies such orders as well as most discussion on fees charged by private schools are homilies about education being a noble vocation which should not be tainted by money. Even when courts have been realistic at times, there is a quick reverting to entrenched attitudes. In 2002, the Supreme Court had, in the T.M.A. Pai vs the State of Karnataka case held that educational institutions are entitled to a reasonable surplus. But, the judge delivering the verdict in the Modern School case two years later noted that earlier judgements had not defined what `reasonable surplus’ is and empowered the director of education to examine the books of account of private schools to ensure that the surplus is, indeed, reasonable.
Some state governments now have laws to regulate school fees. Tamil Nadu set the ball rolling in 2009 and Maharashtra, Rajasthan and Karnataka followed, though the models differ. The latest to join the bandwagon (apart from the Delhi government, whose fee regulation law is in a limbo) is Punjab which promulgated an ordinance in December 2016.
It is true that many private schools tend to exploit the growing demand for them by ripping off parents through steep fee hikes and levying of hefty charges under various heads (uniforms, books, extra curricular activities, to name just a few). Even reasonably well-off middle class families feel the pinch, even if they have just one child. Whether the education that is imparted justifies the huge fees charged is debatable, with parents often having to invest in extra private tuition as well.
But is government micro-management of schools the way to go about it? The root cause of the problem is the lack of good schools and the supply-demand mismatch. Fee regulation laws do not address this. Instead by criminalising and penalising schools, they only further limit the supply. Besides, can a group of bureaucrats really sit in judgement over the economics of running a school? What this fosters is only corruption.
How, then, should the government protect parents from being exploited? The Delhi-based Centre for Civil Society had recommended to the Delhi government that the role of the state should be limited to asking private schools make their fee structure public at the start of an academic year. The government should publish this information on a public portal. This is a sensible idea and perhaps it can be accompanied by a stipulation that arbitrary hikes in the course of the academic year will not be allowed.
Along with this, and more importantly, it needs to let the market expand so that people have more choices. More private schools should be encouraged to come up and if the government wants to offer more affordable choices, then let it improve the quality of education in government schools. The Rajasthan and Delhi governments are taking initial steps towards this, but how these efforts pan out remains to be seen.
Make it easier also for students to shift schools. Schools should not be allowed to delay or hold up transfer certificates, if students want to shift to a more affordable school.
If governments want schools to put a lid on fees, are they ready to stop dictating terms to them and give them concessions?
Schools are also required to pay teachers salaries equivalent to that of government teachers if they want recognition. Schools use this as an excuse for their steep fee hikes. Why should the government get into private teachers’ salaries? Not only is this micro-management, it also encourages corruption.
Private unaided schools in Delhi complain that even if they get land at institutional rates, they are charged commercial rates for power, water and property tax. If the government wants us to lower our fees, they argue, why not give us concessional rates? This is a fair point. Yes, it is possible that school managements can misuse this; fake schools can come up just to avail these concessions. The answer, then, is for the government to refrain from ill-thought of fee regulation measures.
But for all these issues to be addressed, there has to be a mindset shift in the government and the judiciary. There has to be acceptance that education is a business and over-regulation will only make genuine players unwilling to enter the market or stay in it once they are in. India needs a good education system to tap into its demographic potential. Regulation should be confined to broad standards of teaching and academics, not interfering in the way schools are financially managed.
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On March 31, the World Economic Forum (WEF) released its annual Gender Gap Report 2021. The Global Gender Gap report is an annual report released by the WEF. The gender gap is the difference between women and men as reflected in social, political, intellectual, cultural, or economic attainments or attitudes. The gap between men and women across health, education, politics, and economics widened for the first time since records began in 2006.
[wptelegram-join-channel link=”https://t.me/s/upsctree” text=”Join @upsctree on Telegram”]No need to remember all the data, only pick out few important ones to use in your answers.
The Global gender gap index aims to measure this gap in four key areas : health, education, economics, and politics. It surveys economies to measure gender disparity by collating and analyzing data that fall under four indices : economic participation and opportunity, educational attainment, health and survival, and political empowerment.
The 2021 Global Gender Gap Index benchmarks 156 countries on their progress towards gender parity. The index aims to serve as a compass to track progress on relative gaps between women and men in health, education, economy, and politics.
Although no country has achieved full gender parity, the top two countries (Iceland and Finland) have closed at least 85% of their gap, and the remaining seven countries (Lithuania, Namibia, New Zealand, Norway, Sweden, Rwanda, and Ireland) have closed at least 80% of their gap. Geographically, the global top 10 continues to be dominated by Nordic countries, with —Iceland, Norway, Finland, and Sweden—in the top five.
The top 10 is completed by one country from Asia Pacific (New Zealand 4th), two Sub-Saharan countries (Namibia, 6th and Rwanda, 7th, one country from Eastern Europe (the new entrant to the top 10, Lithuania, 8th), and another two Western European countries (Ireland, 9th, and Switzerland, 10th, another country in the top-10 for the first time).There is a relatively equitable distribution of available income, resources, and opportunities for men and women in these countries. The tremendous gender gaps are identified primarily in the Middle East, Africa, and South Asia.
Here, we can discuss the overall global gender gap scores across the index’s four main components : Economic Participation and Opportunity, Educational Attainment, Health and Survival, and Political Empowerment.
The indicators of the four main components are
(1) Economic Participation and Opportunity:
o Labour force participation rate,
o wage equality for similar work,
o estimated earned income,
o Legislators, senior officials, and managers,
o Professional and technical workers.
(2) Educational Attainment:
o Literacy rate (%)
o Enrollment in primary education (%)
o Enrollment in secondary education (%)
o Enrollment in tertiary education (%).
(3) Health and Survival:
o Sex ratio at birth (%)
o Healthy life expectancy (years).
(4) Political Empowerment:
o Women in Parliament (%)
o Women in Ministerial positions (%)
o Years with a female head of State (last 50 years)
o The share of tenure years.
The objective is to shed light on which factors are driving the overall average decline in the global gender gap score. The analysis results show that this year’s decline is mainly caused by a reversal in performance on the Political Empowerment gap.
Global Trends and Outcomes:
– Globally, this year, i.e., 2021, the average distance completed to gender parity gap is 68% (This means that the remaining gender gap to close stands at 32%) a step back compared to 2020 (-0.6 percentage points). These figures are mainly driven by a decline in the performance of large countries. On its current trajectory, it will now take 135.6 years to close the gender gap worldwide.
– The gender gap in Political Empowerment remains the largest of the four gaps tracked, with only 22% closed to date, having further widened since the 2020 edition of the report by 2.4 percentage points. Across the 156 countries covered by the index, women represent only 26.1% of some 35,500 Parliament seats and 22.6% of over 3,400 Ministers worldwide. In 81 countries, there has never been a woman head of State as of January 15, 2021. At the current rate of progress, the World Economic Forum estimates that it will take 145.5 years to attain gender parity in politics.
– The gender gap in Economic Participation and Opportunity remains the second-largest of the four key gaps tracked by the index. According to this year’s index results, 58% of this gap has been closed so far. The gap has seen marginal improvement since the 2020 edition of the report, and as a result, we estimate that it will take another 267.6 years to close.
– Gender gaps in Educational Attainment and Health and Survival are nearly closed. In Educational Attainment, 95% of this gender gap has been closed globally, with 37 countries already attaining gender parity. However, the ‘last mile’ of progress is proceeding slowly. The index estimates that it will take another 14.2 years to close this gap on its current trajectory completely.
In Health and Survival, 96% of this gender gap has been closed, registering a marginal decline since last year (not due to COVID-19), and the time to close this gap remains undefined. For both education and health, while progress is higher than economy and politics in the global data, there are important future implications of disruptions due to the pandemic and continued variations in quality across income, geography, race, and ethnicity.
India-Specific Findings:
India had slipped 28 spots to rank 140 out of the 156 countries covered. The pandemic causing a disproportionate impact on women jeopardizes rolling back the little progress made in the last decades-forcing more women to drop off the workforce and leaving them vulnerable to domestic violence.
India’s poor performance on the Global Gender Gap report card hints at a serious wake-up call and learning lessons from the Nordic region for the Government and policy makers.
Within the 156 countries covered, women hold only 26 percent of Parliamentary seats and 22 percent of Ministerial positions. India, in some ways, reflects this widening gap, where the number of Ministers declined from 23.1 percent in 2019 to 9.1 percent in 2021. The number of women in Parliament stands low at 14.4 percent. In India, the gender gap has widened to 62.5 %, down from 66.8% the previous year.
It is mainly due to women’s inadequate representation in politics, technical and leadership roles, a decrease in women’s labor force participation rate, poor healthcare, lagging female to male literacy ratio, and income inequality.
The gap is the widest on the political empowerment dimension, with economic participation and opportunity being next in line. However, the gap on educational attainment and health and survival has been practically bridged.
India is the third-worst performer among South Asian countries, with Pakistan and Afghanistan trailing and Bangladesh being at the top. The report states that the country fared the worst in political empowerment, regressing from 23.9% to 9.1%.
Its ranking on the health and survival dimension is among the five worst performers. The economic participation and opportunity gap saw a decline of 3% compared to 2020, while India’s educational attainment front is in the 114th position.
India has deteriorated to 51st place from 18th place in 2020 on political empowerment. Still, it has slipped to 155th position from 150th position in 2020 on health and survival, 151st place in economic participation and opportunity from 149th place, and 114th place for educational attainment from 112th.
In 2020 reports, among the 153 countries studied, India is the only country where the economic gender gap of 64.6% is larger than the political gender gap of 58.9%. In 2021 report, among the 156 countries, the economic gender gap of India is 67.4%, 3.8% gender gap in education, 6.3% gap in health and survival, and 72.4% gender gap in political empowerment. In health and survival, the gender gap of the sex ratio at birth is above 9.1%, and healthy life expectancy is almost the same.
Discrimination against women has also been reflected in Health and Survival subindex statistics. With 93.7% of this gap closed to date, India ranks among the bottom five countries in this subindex. The wide sex ratio at birth gaps is due to the high incidence of gender-based sex-selective practices. Besides, more than one in four women has faced intimate violence in her lifetime.The gender gap in the literacy rate is above 20.1%.
Yet, gender gaps persist in literacy : one-third of women are illiterate (34.2%) than 17.6% of men. In political empowerment, globally, women in Parliament is at 128th position and gender gap of 83.2%, and 90% gap in a Ministerial position. The gap in wages equality for similar work is above 51.8%. On health and survival, four large countries Pakistan, India, Vietnam, and China, fare poorly, with millions of women there not getting the same access to health as men.
The pandemic has only slowed down in its tracks the progress India was making towards achieving gender parity. The country urgently needs to focus on “health and survival,” which points towards a skewed sex ratio because of the high incidence of gender-based sex-selective practices and women’s economic participation. Women’s labour force participation rate and the share of women in technical roles declined in 2020, reducing the estimated earned income of women, one-fifth of men.
Learning from the Nordic region, noteworthy participation of women in politics, institutions, and public life is the catalyst for transformational change. Women need to be equal participants in the labour force to pioneer the societal changes the world needs in this integral period of transition.
Every effort must be directed towards achieving gender parallelism by facilitating women in leadership and decision-making positions. Social protection programmes should be gender-responsive and account for the differential needs of women and girls. Research and scientific literature also provide unequivocal evidence that countries led by women are dealing with the pandemic more effectively than many others.
Gendered inequality, thereby, is a global concern. India should focus on targeted policies and earmarked public and private investments in care and equalized access. Women are not ready to wait for another century for equality. It’s time India accelerates its efforts and fight for an inclusive, equal, global recovery.
India will not fully develop unless both women and men are equally supported to reach their full potential. There are risks, violations, and vulnerabilities women face just because they are women. Most of these risks are directly linked to women’s economic, political, social, and cultural disadvantages in their daily lives. It becomes acute during crises and disasters.
With the prevalence of gender discrimination, and social norms and practices, women become exposed to the possibility of child marriage, teenage pregnancy, child domestic work, poor education and health, sexual abuse, exploitation, and violence. Many of these manifestations will not change unless women are valued more.
[wptelegram-join-channel link=”https://t.me/s/upsctree” text=”Join @upsctree on Telegram”]2021 WEF Global Gender Gap report, which confirmed its 2016 finding of a decline in worldwide progress towards gender parity.
Over 2.8 billion women are legally restricted from having the same choice of jobs as men. As many as 104 countries still have laws preventing women from working in specific jobs, 59 countries have no laws on sexual harassment in the workplace, and it is astonishing that a handful of countries still allow husbands to legally stop their wives from working.
Globally, women’s participation in the labour force is estimated at 63% (as against 94% of men who participate), but India’s is at a dismal 25% or so currently. Most women are in informal and vulnerable employment—domestic help, agriculture, etc—and are always paid less than men.
Recent reports from Assam suggest that women workers in plantations are paid much less than men and never promoted to supervisory roles. The gender wage gap is about 24% globally, and women have lost far more jobs than men during lockdowns.
The problem of gender disparity is compounded by hurdles put up by governments, society and businesses: unequal access to social security schemes, banking services, education, digital services and so on, even as a glass ceiling has kept leadership roles out of women’s reach.
Yes, many governments and businesses had been working on parity before the pandemic struck. But the global gender gap, defined by differences reflected in the social, political, intellectual, cultural and economic attainments or attitudes of men and women, will not narrow in the near future without all major stakeholders working together on a clear agenda—that of economic growth by inclusion.
The WEF report estimates 135 years to close the gap at our current rate of progress based on four pillars: educational attainment, health, economic participation and political empowerment.
India has slipped from rank 112 to 140 in a single year, confirming how hard women were hit by the pandemic. Pakistan and Afghanistan are the only two Asian countries that fared worse.
Here are a few things we must do:
One, frame policies for equal-opportunity employment. Use technology and artificial intelligence to eliminate biases of gender, caste, etc, and select candidates at all levels on merit. Numerous surveys indicate that women in general have a better chance of landing jobs if their gender is not known to recruiters.
Two, foster a culture of gender sensitivity. Take a review of current policies and move from gender-neutral to gender-sensitive. Encourage and insist on diversity and inclusion at all levels, and promote more women internally to leadership roles. Demolish silos to let women grab potential opportunities in hitherto male-dominant roles. Work-from-home has taught us how efficiently women can manage flex-timings and productivity.
Three, deploy corporate social responsibility (CSR) funds for the education and skilling of women and girls at the bottom of the pyramid. CSR allocations to toilet building, the PM-Cares fund and firms’ own trusts could be re-channelled for this.
Four, get more women into research and development (R&D) roles. A study of over 4,000 companies found that more women in R&D jobs resulted in radical innovation. It appears women score far higher than men in championing change. If you seek growth from affordable products and services for low-income groups, women often have the best ideas.
Five, break barriers to allow progress. Cultural and structural issues must be fixed. Unconscious biases and discrimination are rampant even in highly-esteemed organizations. Establish fair and transparent human resource policies.
Six, get involved in local communities to engage them. As Michael Porter said, it is not possible for businesses to sustain long-term shareholder value without ensuring the welfare of the communities they exist in. It is in the best interest of enterprises to engage with local communities to understand and work towards lowering cultural and other barriers in society. It will also help connect with potential customers, employees and special interest groups driving the gender-equity agenda and achieve better diversity.