Syllabus Connect :- GS III (Security challenges and their management in border areas; linkages of organized crime with terrorism)
Context:-
The withdrawal of United States troops from the Bagram military base, its biggest military base in Afghanistan, by stealth at night in early July without keeping the Afghan authorities in the loop marked the formal ending of the 20-year-old military occupation of Afghanistan.
The hasty exit from Bagram demonstrated the lack of coordination between the USA administration and the government in Kabul, even as the resurgent Taliban forces gained ground across the country. The USA administration decided to beat a retreat from Afghanistan much before the September 11 deadline that was originally announced.
In comparison to the chaos that characterised the withdrawal of U.S. forces after their defeat in the Vietnam war, the U.S. retreat from its last operating military base in Afghanistan was an orderly one.
During the course of the two-decade-long U.S. occupation, the Bagram military base, built in the 1950s by the Soviet Union, had burgeoned into a mini city. It was the staging post for the 100,000 U.S. troops stationed in Afghanistan a decade ago.
There are reports that Washington decided to pull its troops out of Bagram in a hurry, fearing that the Taliban would capture Kabul. The capital’s airport is just an hour’s drive from the military base. The Taliban described the departure of U.S. troops from the Bagram base as “a positive step”.
Military allies of the U.S., such as Britain, Germany and other members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO), complained that the hurried departure of U.S. troops left them exposed and the allied Afghan forces were without effective air cover.
According to U.S. media reports, U.S. intelligence agencies have told the USA administration that the Taliban could take over Kabul within six months. At the most, the U.S. intelligence agencies estimate, the government of President Ashraf Ghani could hold on for two years. The Taliban has already made rapid advances towards the capital in the last month and a half. The Taliban claims that it controls two-thirds of the country.
By mid-July, it had seized control of key border posts used for most of the trade with Pakistan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Iran. Spin Boldak, on the border with Pakistan, was one of the important border posts to fall.
Danish Siddiqui, the Indian photo journalist who was covering the fighting, was killed in a Taliban attack. Many Afghan army units are either surrendering without a fight or running away, leaving behind expensive U.S.-supplied equipment such as Humvees.
USA’s reassurance
Speaking after the withdrawal of U.S. soldiers from Bagram, USA tried to reassure the government in Kabul that Washington was not abandoning the country. Top U.S. officials have openly stated that Washington retains the option of bombing Afghanistan even after the military occupation ends.
However, Pentagon officials are pressuring Biden to authorise air strikes in the event of the Taliban trying to take over Kabul and other cities by force. Critics of the Afghan war point out that a Taliban takeover of most of Afghanistan is inevitable. If the U.S. decides to start bombing the Taliban again, there will be no end to the war in the country. Biden recently admitted that the “likelihood that there will be one unified government in Afghanistan controlling the whole country is highly unlikely”.
The ceasefire between the Taliban and the U.S.-led occupation forces is still in force. Any U.S. targeting of the Taliban at this juncture would jeopardise the safe withdrawal of the few remaining troops from the country. A contingent of 600 U.S. troops will remain in Kabul to guard the U.S. embassy there.
The Taliban, on its part, has scrupulously avoided targeting U.S. and NATO troops. Only the Turkish contingent of NATO support forces remain in Afghanistan. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan had told the U.S. that Turkish troops would help secure the Kabul airport from the Taliban after U.S. troops left the country. The Taliban described the Turkish move “as ill advised, a violation of our sovereignty and territorial integrity and against our national interests”.
Searching military bases elsewhere
The U.S. has been desperately looking for military bases in neighbouring countries from which to conduct future operations in Afghanistan. This time Pakistan has refused U.S. requests for access to its military bases. The Afghan Taliban had threatened Islamabad with repercussions if the Americans were allowed to use Pakistani bases to stage attacks inside Afghanistan. The U.S. has asked for access to military bases in Central Asian countries such as Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. So far, these countries have been reluctant to oblige.
The U.S. had military bases in Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan in the early days of the occupation. These bases were closed following public opinion in these countries and Moscow’s suspicions about Washington’s long-term strategy in the region.
For the time being, the U.S. will have to depend on its military bases in the United Arab Emirates and Qatar to help its Afghan allies with surveillance. U.S. aircraft carriers are stationed in the Arabian Sea on a permanent basis. Russia has warned the U.S. against deploying troops in the Central Asian region after the withdrawal from Afghanistan.
General Austin Miller, the U.S.’ top commander in Afghanistan, who announced his retirement after the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Bagram, told reporters that he envisioned the return to a civil war-like situation in the country. With the Afghan army and special forces unable to halt the Taliban advance, both the Afghan government and the U.S. are encouraging the formation of militias.
The Hazara minority, which suffered greatly under Taliban rule, has formed its own militias. Many notorious warlords such as Abdul Rashid Dostum are once again gearing up for action against the Taliban. A few minor warlords, on the other hand, have switched sides and pledged their allegiance to the Taliban.
After ensuring the exit of the U.S. forces, the Taliban is trying to cultivate a more moderate image in the international community. While making military gains, the organisation is also publicly offering an olive branch to its adversaries. Afghanistan’s warring sides have resumed peace talks in Doha, Qatar’s capital.
The Taliban was initially reluctant to resume the talks with the government for various reasons. One reason was the U.S.’ refusal to withdraw its troops by May this year as agreed in the peace deal the two sides signed in Doha last February. Another sticking point was the Kabul government’s reluctance to release the remaining Taliban prisoners.
The prisoners’ release has been held up because of the Taliban’s refusal to form a unity government in Kabul until elections are held. The Taliban has also been reiterating that it does not believe in elections and Western-style democracy. Despite international opposition, the Taliban has said that it is determined to re-establish an “Islamic Emirate” to rule the country.
In the third week of July, during the ongoing talks in Doha, the Taliban offered a three-month ceasefire in exchange for the release of more than 7,000 of its fighters and activists imprisoned by the government.
Many of the Taliban fighters are incarcerated in the Bagram base. On July 18, even as the Taliban was busy capturing more territory, Haibatullah Hakimzada, its supreme leader, said that he “strenuously favours” a political settlement to the conflict in Afghanistan.
In a statement he said: “In spite of the military gains and advances, the Islamic Emirate strenuously favours a political settlement in the country. Every opportunity for the establishment of an Islamic system, peace and security that presents itself will be made use of by the Islamic Emirate.” The Taliban leader blamed the opposition for “wasting time” and relying on foreigners to resolve the Afghan conflict.
Pressure from neighbours
All of Afghanistan’s neighbours, including Pakistan, have urged the Taliban to desist from attacking cities. Russia and China are particularly concerned about what the future holds for Afghanistan as their national security could be severely impinged if the country once again spirals into all-out civil war.
Moscow has been active on the diplomatic front to get the warring sides in Afghanistan to agree to a peaceful power sharing. The Russian government hosted talks four months ago, which was attended by the “extended Troika” consisting of Russia, China, the U.S. and Pakistan.
According to ground reports, the Taliban is no longer a purely Pashtun-dominated grouping. Its growth in the last decade has apparently been broad-based, with Tajiks, Uzbeks and even Hazaras joining its ranks. That is one reason why the Taliban has been able to make rapid advances in the north in the last two months in areas once dominated by the Northern Alliance led by the Tajik warlord Ahmad Shah Masood and supported by the West, Russia, Iran and India.
Mohammed Suhail Shaheen, the Taliban spokesman, reiterated in Moscow that the Taliban had no intention of forcibly capturing cities and shedding more blood. He said that the Taliban’s policy “is to find a political solution to the Afghan issue, which is continuing in Doha”.
Shaheen claimed that the Taliban had gained territory in recent months through peaceful handovers. He said in most areas, the Afghan security forces surrendered voluntarily without a fight. Afghan security forces manning a key border crossing on the border with Tajikistan chose to flee across the border without a fight. However, recent reports suggest that Afghan security forces are putting up a brave fight in areas such as Kandahar, Kunduz and Spin Boldak.
Russia reportedly is planning to remove the Taliban from its “terror” list. The Taliban seems to have assured China that it will join the Belt Road Initiative (BRI) and ban the Uyghur terrorists currently fighting in Idlib from returning to Afghanistan. Both Russia and China want to ensure that Afghanistan will not be a haven for terrorists once again.
Afghanistan was on top of the agenda at the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) Foreign Ministers meeting held in Dushanbe, the Tajik capital, in the third week of July. The SCO, of which India is a member, wants the peace process to be “Afghan owned and Afghan led”.
India has also established channels of communications with the Taliban. An Indian delegation recently met with Taliban representatives in Doha. Moscow and Beijing have told both the Afghan government and the Taliban that they prefer the formation of a provisional coalition government for the next two to three years.
Meanwhile, the Afghan government’s relations with Pakistan have deteriorated once again following the Taliban’s capture of Spin Boldak. President Ghani has accused the Pakistan government of allowing 10,000 fighters to sneak into Afghanistan to create unrest there. Kabul has blamed the Pakistan Air Force for helping the Taliban in its takeover of the important trading post.
Pakistan announced in the second week of July that it was planning to host an Afghan peace conference in Islamabad, which would be attended by the Afghan government, the Taliban and members of the extended Troika. In the third week of July, Afghanistan withdrew its ambassador from Islamabad following an unsavoury incident in which a diplomat’s daughter was abducted and assaulted by unknown kidnappers. Pakistan has since announced the postponement of the Afghan peace conference.
Pakistan has strongly denied the Afghan President’s allegations of its alleged “negative role” in the Afghan conflict.
It is, however, no secret that many Taliban fighters are still lying low in the tribal areas of Pakistan. The Taliban was a creation of the Pakistani intelligence services but a lot has changed in the last 20 years.
The Taliban, more broad-based now, recognises the importance of paying attention to other powerful neighbours such as Iran, besides China and Russia, for the return of lasting peace and stability in Afghanistan. Given the ethnic make-up of the country and its history, the Taliban leadership knows that no party can rule on its own in Afghanistan.
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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.