*Note- This is an excerpt of the speeches made by different dignitaries.This is not a typical editorial instead an account of most important things of those speeches.The editorial discusses just about everything with related to agriculture and by the end of it you will be able to answer many question and have holistic understanding of it and some more.
If you thought that you know everything about agriculture, you certainly don’t.
Food for thought :-
- What is brown revolution in agriculture ?
- Why Rajasthan farmers don’t commit suicide much ?
- How to double the income of Indian household -Is the Prime Minister of India is day dreaming ?
- What is precision farming.
- Vertical farming – do we really need it – or is it just that we mention it because we think it is fancy.
- What is the potential for post-harvest value addition ?
- Farming not only needs cows and buffaloes but also cloud computing- Really ?
- What is UBERISATION- booking a cab in UBER ? – Not really
- What are custom-hiring centers ?
Read on to find out.
Rajasthan Chief Minister Vasundhara Raje kicked off the three-day agri-tech meet, GRAM 2016, in Jaipur recently. She promised to transform the state’s agricultural landscape by actively promoting global best practices and invited the corporates to join hands with farmers to modernise agriculture in the state.
Two sessions were scheduled for the first day; on sustainable measures towards achieving the goal of doubling farm incomes and discussion on the way forward in the Rajasthan-Israel partnership.
Ashok Gulati, Infosys Chair Professor, Indian Council for Research on International Economic Relations (ICRIER) chaired the first session. He called Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s target of doubling farmer incomes by 2022 “very ambitious”. Gulati queried if by doubling farm incomes, the prime minister meant real incomes or the nominal incomes as both are very different things.
Gulati told the audience that India’s household incomes grew by a meagre 3.5 per cent between 2002-03 to 2012-13. He noted that during the same period, Rajasthan did much better and its farmers’ household incomes grew at a decent pace of 7.5 per cent. However, to double the farm incomes nationally in the next six years, the required growth is 12 per cent per annum which is an uphill task.
But despite this scepticism, Gulati raised important questions: Where will the increased income come from? How do we get there?
And the idea is not to just grow but also to make sure that the yields are sustainable over long term and equitable. Gulati pointed out to some side-effects of the green revolution. While this greatly increased prosperity in the regions of Haryana and Punjab, these states have seen their water table depleting. Hence, simply increasing yields is not sufficient, he said.
Gulati contended that India needs to move from green to gene to brown revolution in agriculture.
What is ‘brown’ revolution? It relates to focusing greatly on the soil quality. We need to figure out exactly the kind of crops the soil is ideal for, the amount of seeds, fertilisers, irrigation needs, moisture level etc. The world is increasingly adopting technologies that greatly rely on soil quality.
Everything a soil needs can be figured out by advanced technology, and machines can assess whatever a crop needs at whatever time and the required quantity. This obviates the need for human intervention. A person can focus on tracking the work of the machine sitting at his/her home as all the data can be uploaded on the cloud.
In states likes Iowa and Illinois, the results of such experiments have been good, Gulati said. He said that in these states, in maize cultivation for instance, the yields are as high as 11 tonnes per hectare and this has been achieved with lesser irrigation, seed and fertilisers.
Can this be replicated in India? To answer this, Gulati called his fellow panelists from Israel to speak about their experiments here in collaboration with Rajasthan. Israel’s geography somewhat resembles that of Rajasthan’s as both states are semi-arid regions.
Dr Bergvinson, director general, International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT) was the first to put his views across on the matter. He rightly emphasised that instead of ‘per drop more crop’ the focus should shift to extracting more income. He listed the various challenges for Indian agriculture including the lack of diversified food system. Like Gulati, Bergivinson also batted for leveraging the power of cloud computing by adopting the method of ‘precision farming’. Underscoring the need for this shift, he said that due to climate change, uncertainties are increasing and this has made farming more unpredictable.
He told the audience about the experiment on precision farming carried out in Andhra Pradesh where those who used the technology saw their yields increase 22 per cent and those who didn’t, fall by 30 per cent. To make the shift towards more technology-based farming, he said that private public producer partnership is needed along with concerted efforts at the state level.
Martien Van Nieuwkoops of the World Bank said that agriculture is an important sector which can do wonders for the bank’s dream of eradicating poverty and increasing shared prosperity as the sector is one which can have a multiplier effect. But where will the agriculture growth come from?
He mentioned three sources:
1) Yield gaps: He said that this gap, which stands at about 50 per cent in India, needs to be closed.
2) He said that farmers need to shift from cereals to more economic crops or into dairy, fruits and vegetables. The current incentives are stacked in favour of cereal crops (high MSPs, favourable environment) but farmers must move to high value crops and diversification in farming is needed.
3) He also talked about post-harvest value addition, which includes steps like processing, grading, polishing etc. To underscore the importance of these steps, he informed that for every rupee of production, post-harvest value addition in India is also Rs 1. While the same in Europe and America is Rs 8/10 for every rupee. That means, there is a lot of potential for growth.
Yuval Fuchs, Deputy head of Israel’s MASHAV agency, said that poverty reduction remains a global goal, and not just India’s. He noted that 26 per cent of world poorest people live in India. However, he said that good news is that one of the largest number of poor have been lifted out of poverty in India.
Speaking on how Israel can help Rajasthan in doubling farm incomes, Yuval told the audience that though Rajasthan is a leader in milk production in India (which in turn is a global leader in milk production), a cow here gives 5 to 7 litres of milk on average but in Israel, this comes to around to 36 to 40 litres of milk! That’s five to six times more. Imagine if Rajasthan increases its productivity, he said.
Dan Alluf, a MASHAV counsellor, spoke of his experience of three excellence centres that MASHAV has been operating in cooperation with the Rajasthan government. He told that about 70 per cent of the water that Israel uses for agriculture is actually recycled water, which it is looking to increase to 90 per cent in future. He said that MASHAV understands that though conditions in India are quite different from Israel, the expertise they are bringing in can be successful, with the implementation being tailor made for India.
Dan spoke about three segments of value chain that MASHAV is focusing on at its excellence centres. These include: 1) Nursery management. Nurseries are high-tech and they provide high-quality seedlings to farmers which also generate income for the centres, making them self-reliant. 2) Cultivation and canopy management where the idea is to encourage intensification which leads to more crops, better pest control and in turn better incomes. 3) Better irrigation and fertigation.
Yuval and Dan also spoke during the second session of the day which centred around enchancing the Rajasthan-Israel partnership, where the Rajasthan Agriculture Minister Prabhu Lal Saini was also present. Saini thanked Yuval and Dan for being great friends of India and for Israel’s support. He then suggested that Israel also consider supporting Rajasthan farmers in productivity enhancement, improving shelf life of harvested crops, quality, shape and size improvement and increasing the nutritional value of food crops. He also called for cooperation in tackling pests diseases in crops such as Nimotode, YUM, and white fly problem.
In the first session, MukulVarshney, vice president of John Deere India, spoke on the increasing challenge of labour shortage which in turn has made it more expensive. Here comes the role of machines. He said that his company, a university, seed and fertiliser specialists formed a consortium and went to farmers and understood their problems, then convinced the government to frame favourable policies to help farmers. He said that they advised farmers how to grow crops, which machines to use, even which tractor of how much horsepower may be the right fit for them, etc. pneumatic machines helped farmers a lot. Every seed planted using the machine germinated with proper row spacing. The experiment conducted in Punjab for cotton crop resulted in increased yields anywhere between 35 to 65 per cent. Introduction of these machines for sowing and picking cotton obviated the need for labour. He informed that they are looking to scale the pilot projects in future.
Since farmers in India are small and marginal with little capital to spend on buying technology and equipment, he said, that the Rajasthan government has launched Custom Hiring Centres (CHCs). Through these centres, farmers can rent out farm equipment needed. They don’t need to spend money on buying these. By this, government is doing UBERISATION of the farm equipment.
Rajasthan plans to open over 2,600 hiring centres at the panchayat samiti level in the next three years to enable the state’s farmers to rent farming equipment, Chief Minister Raje had announced earlier during her speech.
Balraj Singh, vice-chancellor of Jodhpur Agricultural University, who was the last speaker of the first session stressed on improving soil health, enhancing organic matter, fertility, rainwater harvesting and making the judicious use of available water. He told that the reason why Rajasthan doesn’t see many suicides is because agriculture in the state is closely linked to animal husbandry, but he said that state needs to focus more on improving local breeds. He also called for promoting hybrid seed production and GI filling for crops like cumins, nagorimethi, gum, shahpuratenda etc, which Rajasthan is a pioneer in.
During the second session on the Rajasthan-Israel partnership, Nipun Sabrwal, head of operations at Top Greenhouses Ltd, was the last to speak. He focussed on adopting the best practices in the way we currently do agriculture. Instead of talking about vertical farming etc, he said Indian farmers first need to focus on doing horizontal farming right.
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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.