Technology & Society
Lights, Camera, Unemployment: The Rise and Fall of India’s YouTube Village — and What Came After
A village in Chhattisgarh became the symbol of rural India’s digital dream. Then the views fell, the studio emptied, and the panchayat moved in. The story of Tulsi — and the millions of young Indians still pointing their phones at the world — is about far more than YouTube.
The signboard still says “HamaarFlix,” painted in a Netflix-style font on a dusty wall in the village of Tulsi, about 50 kilometres from Raipur. A YouTube logo — bright red, slightly faded — sits beside it. Inside, where cameras and editing computers once hummed, there is now a broken LCD monitor gathering dust in a locked room. The studio that cost Rs 25 lakh, built in 2023 by a Raipur collector who wanted to turn a digital dream into something permanent, is most days used as a meeting room where panchayat members shuffle paperwork and drink tea.
Just outside, 61-year-old Pyarelal Verma, who spent years in front of a camera as a regular face on the village’s YouTube channel, is back in his fields. The camera has been replaced by a spade. The like button, by soil.
This is what the end of India’s most-watched rural content experiment looks like, up close. But the story of Tulsi is not really about failure. It is about something more complicated — about what happens when an entire generation, staring at a job market that cannot absorb them, turns its gaze toward the only screen it can reach, and begins to film the wait.
I. The Rise: When a Village Became a Capital
It began, as most things in the internet economy begin, with someone having a go. In 2018, Jai Verma — a chemistry tutor — and his friend Gyanendra Shukla, who worked at the State Bank of India, launched a YouTube channel called “Being Chhattisgarhiya.” They made comedy sketches: parodies of the popular TV show CID, skits about village life and exam stress, and local humour inspired by the kind of content The Viral Fever (TVF) was making famous in cities.
The channel grew. Locals acted in the videos. Neighbours watched. The subscriber count climbed past 1.28 lakh. Views accumulated past 2.78 crore. Word spread. More channels launched. At its peak in 2024, over 40 YouTube channels operated from this single village of 4,000 people. “Being Chhattisgarhiya,” “36 Garhiya,” “Alwa Jalwa,” “Fun Tapri,” “Gold CG04” — they made sketch videos and local music and earned through ad revenue and brand deals. A quarter of Tulsi’s residents had, at some point, stepped in front of a camera.
The media noticed. In 2023, Tulsi was dubbed India’s “YouTube capital.” A local collector installed the Rs 25-lakh studio. For a brief, extraordinary period, it looked like content creation might be a genuine rural economy — not just a hobby, not just a side hustle, but work that kept the lights on and put cash in pockets in a village where the nearest alternative was a shift in a cement or power plant.
What Is the “Creator Economy”?
When Attention Becomes a Business Model
The creator economy is the system by which individuals — rather than studios, newspapers, or broadcast companies — produce content and earn money from it. The money comes from three main sources: advertising revenue shared by platforms (YouTube pays creators based on how many people watch their videos); brand deals (a company pays a creator to mention or feature their product); and direct payments from audiences (subscriptions, tips, memberships). Entry costs are low — you need a phone and an internet connection. But earning enough to live on requires either a very large audience, a very loyal niche one, or both. The gap between the two is where most creators spend most of their time.
II. The Fall: When the Algorithm Moved On
Then the views dropped.
The collapse, by Jai Verma’s own account, came from two directions at once. First, the platforms changed. Instagram and YouTube began aggressively promoting short-form content — Reels and YouTube Shorts — rewarding videos that run under 60 seconds over the longer sketch comedy that Tulsi’s creators had built their audiences on. The channels did not adapt fast enough. “Our biggest mistake was our inability to switch to Reels and short-form,” said Jai, now 33 and unemployed after a stint with the Election Commission. “Gradually, we stopped getting content ideas and even the villagers slowly lost interest.”
The second direction was internal. Co-creator Shukla now works factory shifts. Channels that once carried dozens of collaborators fell quiet as the collaborative energy dissipated. The brand deals — which had provided the real money — vanished alongside the falling view counts. “Being Chhattisgarhiya” lies stagnant. Most of the 40 channels have gone dark. The people who acted in the videos have returned to fields and daily wage work.
The Rs 25-lakh studio, built as a statement of faith in rural digital aspiration, now functions as a panchayat office.
III. The Timepass Generation, Upgraded
To understand why Tulsi happened, and why hundreds of towns across India are living through their own version of it right now, it helps to go back to a book published in 2010.
Academic Craig Jeffrey spent years studying the young men of northern India — graduates who could not find work, who spent their days at tea stalls and college canteens and village crossroads, passing time in the particular listless way of people whose education has outrun the economy’s ability to employ them. He called his book Timepass: Youth, Class, and the Politics of Waiting in India.
What Is “Timepass”?
The Politics of Having Nothing to Do
In India, “timepass” is a colloquial phrase for killing time — chatting, loitering, doing nothing in particular. Craig Jeffrey used it to describe a generation of educated young men who were stuck between two worlds: educated enough to expect formal employment, but in an economy that couldn’t provide it. They were not lazy. They were waiting. Jeffrey’s insight was that this waiting was not passive — it was a economic condition, produced by policy failures and structural inequalities, and it carried its own dignity and coping mechanisms. The “timepass generation” of 2010 spent its days at tea stalls. The timepass generation of 2026 films it and uploads it. The waiting is the same. The medium has changed.
The numbers tell the story with uncomfortable precision. Graduate unemployment in India stands at 29.1 per cent according to a 2024 International Labour Organization report. A March 2026 study by Azim Premji University found that nearly 40 per cent of graduates between 15 and 25 are unemployed. Meanwhile, a 2025 Ernst & Young report found that Indians spend an average of five hours per day on their smartphones — up sharply from 3.3 hours in 2023.
These two facts — rising unemployment and rising screen time — are not a coincidence. They are the same phenomenon, measured from different angles. As the job market contracts, time and aspiration are redirected toward the only arena where the barriers to entry are low and the theoretical upside is high: the phone screen, the camera, the upload button.
IV. The People Who Are Making It Work — and Why
The most important distinction in the creator economy is not between those who succeed and those who fail. It is between those who treat content as the product and those who treat content as the tool.
Tikeshwar Verma, 24, is the exception that proves the rule in Tulsi. While most of his village’s creators were chasing virality with sketch comedy and local humour, Tikeshwar was posting videos of battery repairs and electric vehicle maintenance from his small shop on the village outskirts. The shop is called TikTechEV. So is the YouTube channel. The two are indistinguishable.
Customers from Maharashtra to Chhattisgarh call him because they found him on YouTube. He earns around Rs 35,000 a month — sometimes a lakh — at least twice the income of his peers on factory shifts nearby. He is not trying to become an influencer. He is using YouTube the way an earlier generation used a signboard or a classified ad: to tell people what he does and where to find him.
“I still do my regular job, but content creation has helped me market it better,” he says. “It’s ultimately about knowing how to use it efficiently.”
Three Creators, Three Approaches — Vidisha and Raipur
Vijay Bairagi, 29 — Vidisha, Madhya Pradesh. Former security supervisor. Pandemic closed his fast-food outlet. Started an Instagram page to share Covid alerts for oxygen and blood. The followers came. He turned it into a local advertising platform — “Vidisha Shahar” — charging shops, clinics, and restaurants Rs 5,000 to Rs 8,000 per Reel. 1.3 lakh followers. Steady but unpredictable. His widowed mother bought him his first iPhone to support the pivot. His sister and aunt have since joined, gaining thousands of followers of their own.
Ashmeet Kaur Sethi, 23 — Vidisha. Failed her CA foundation exam in 2021. Cleared it the next year but didn’t go back to accounting, because by then her food vlogging page “Cravings 24 Seven” had started earning. “There was nobody from a small town like Vidisha reviewing food here,” she says. “I grew because I had a hyper-local feel.” She now earns Rs 6,000 to 8,000 per Reel, sometimes Rs 1 lakh in a good month. She is also pursuing an MBA — because even the people who are making money in this space keep a back door open.
Pratibha Sahu, 20 — Raipur. Fifty-four thousand Instagram followers in a year. BSc degree. No backup plan. Her content is deliberately cosmopolitan — she calls her aesthetic a “SoBo girl” (South Bombay), deliberately divorced from the hyperlocal feel that works for Ashmeet. The dream is Mumbai. She has no plans to pivot. She is the youngest of the three and the only one not hedging her bets.
V. The Parallel Economy Nobody Planned For
One of the less-told stories inside the creator boom is the informal ecosystem it has generated around itself. For every creator making a Reel, there are usually one or two other young people helping them make it: editing footage, operating cameras, writing scripts. Most of them are self-taught. Almost all are under 25. None of them have contracts.
In Bhopal, food vlogger Kawalpreet Kaur Kalsi — a BCom graduate who earns significantly more from brand collaborations than from any sales job she could have taken — employs two young editors from rural Rajasthan for filming and post-production. “It’s creating a parallel industry of people who may not be professionally trained, but self-taught,” she says.
The industry is real. It is also entirely informal. No contracts. No fixed salaries. No continuity guaranteed. Work flows in and out with trends, followers, and the mood of an algorithm calibrated to serve a platform’s quarterly revenue, not a village’s employment rate.
VI. The Math That Most People Don’t Want to Hear
The endgame many imagine — the leap from local Reels to national fame, from bedroom videos to a business like Kusha Kapila’s — is real, but vanishingly rare. Indore-based hiring consultant Tarun, who sees 60 to 70 per cent of Gen Z applicants come to him with some content creation experience on their CVs, still tells them to take BPO jobs. “It pays Rs 15,000 to 20,000, there’s no glamour, but it’s stable,” he says. Even those jobs, he adds, are becoming harder to find.
Entrepreneur Akshay Hunka, who founded the “Berozgaar Sena” in Madhya Pradesh, estimates from his campaign work that at least 70 per cent of the state’s youth is unemployed. “People want stability,” he says. “What percent of people can actually strike success through YouTube or Instagram? Just because it looks so appealing, doesn’t mean it is.”
In Tulsi, the panchayat has moved into the studio. Outside, Pyarelal Verma works his fields. Jai Verma sits in a rented room in Raipur, reassessing. Gyanendra Shukla works factory shifts. Not far away, Tikeshwar Verma props his phone against a toolbox and films another battery repair between customers.
These are not two different stories. They are the same story, at different stages. The creator economy, in small-town India, is not delivering what it promised — not consistently, not at scale, not for the millions who need it most. But it is doing something. For the Tikeshwars, it is a tool. For the Vijays, it is a livelihood with uncertain edges. For the Pratibhas, it is a dream, unhedged. For the Jais and the Gyanendras, it was all of these things, briefly, until it wasn’t.
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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.