This is one of a kind and a must read for every one.
Culture is not always about doling out grants, holding mega-festivals, or just about sob stories around lack of preservation. If the economics of culture is understood, it can bring in prosperity and boost soft power. But, how exactly should India go about it?
Most nations, including Malaysia, Thailand, African countries and so on have a national cultural policy that sets a roadmap for the management of the country’s creative economy.
For the longest time it has been argued that India woefully lacked a national culture policy. Ironically, the formulation of such a policy has been opposed by several committees set up by the Ministry of Culture itself for the express intention of designing such a policy.
In June 2008, after several meetings held at taxpayers’ expense, yet another such committee of luminaries declared to the media that Indians were a disparate community, that there was hardly anything common between a Kashmiri and a Malayali or a Gujarati and a Mizo in terms of their culture and hence there was no need for a homogenised policy that served them all. The usual apprehensions of a unified or majoritarian imposition of cultural standards were expressed and the committee had a quiet, unsung burial.
For any meaningful discussion on cultural policy or cultural activity in a country as vast and diverse as India, it is no doubt essential to keep in mind the complex, multi-layered and multi-dimensional cultural fabric of this country, which despite its diversities is united by that single intangible thread of Indianness, which defies definitions and boundaries.
A culture policy for a diverse nation like India (or for that matter any country) is in no way an attempt to homogenise the country’s culture – an act, which is anyway impossible through mere legislations or executive decisions. After all, the more than 5,000-year-old civilisational history and culture of India has borne numerous challenges to be shaken by such a policy document. A policy of this kind is not even an attempt to define what the culture of India needs to be. A national culture policy needs to look broadly at effective ways of managing, promoting, preserving and showcasing this rich and vibrant culture and handle the economics of the culture ‘industry’ through a variety of innovative initiatives, new participation, governmental incentives, funding and public private partnership (PPP) models.
The culture policy can be seen as an area of intersection between activities and initiatives of various ministries of the government of India, such as Ministry of External Affairs, Human Resource and Development, Tourism, Commerce and Industry, Textiles, Small-scale and Agro Industries etc, and not necessarily just the Ministry of Culture (MoC).
1. Complete overhaul, rationalisation and effective management of existing cultural bodies coming under the government of India.
One of the biggest challenges facing the governmental intervention in the domain of culture is the lack of skilled administrators for the 45 odd organisations that fall under the MoC ranging from Sangeet Natak Akademi, Lalit Kala Akademi, Sahitya Akademi, National Gallery of Modern Art, National Museum, National School of Drama, the seven Zonal Cultural Centres, CCRT, Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts (IGNCA) and so on.
While performing artists are masters in their disciplines, they need not always be skilled and unbiased administrators who understand the fine nuances of management. Bureaucrats many a times consider a Culture Ministry posting as a punishment one as they are not exposed to or are not sensitive to the arts. Unlike most countries of the world, India lacks a discipline of “arts management” or “arts administration” that helps produce young, administrative talent specifically for managing our arts institutions, museums, monuments, libraries, art galleries and centres for performing arts.
In addition to mediocrity and inefficiency, most of the bodies under MoC have a huge duplicity of their functions. Everyone seems to be intent on rediscovering the same wheel, and that too over and over again.
This is not something that the ministry is unaware of.
In 1964, the Bhabha Committee was set up to analyse the ills facing the ministry and its report was submitted in October 1964. Result: NO ACTION.
The Khosla Committee set up for the same task in 1970, submitted its report in 1972. Result: NO ACTION.
The Haksar Committee set up in 1988, submitted a report in 1990. Result: NO ACTION.
High Powered Committee (HPC) set up in January 2014 under the chairmanship of Abhijeet Sengupta and submitted to the parliament with more than 220 pointed action items and recommendations. Lo! And Behold – yet again, NO ACTION! The HPC rightly points out:
“First, if the Government wishes to experiment with change in administrative systems, a small Ministry like Culture could be a starting point. Second, many of the changes we propose are not entirely new, they revisit the conditions that existed fifty years ago; it is since then that rigidity has set in. And, third, this Ministry is one whose very mandate should require it to interact with the young, with creative, independent minds: it has to be a catalyst for new beginnings.”
Most of our culture bodies on which huge sums of money are spent are leaderless. The institutions work in silos and do not talk to one another. Issues of autonomy and transparency dog most of them. Creation of new jobs and skills with specialisation must be a prerequisite for management of cultural organisations and not mere ad-hoc postings. The ministry must ensure that there is a proper roadmap and periodic performance audits of these bodies, to see if they are achieving the objectives for which they were set up in the first place.
Regional centres are set up as further money-guzzling mechanisms, with no sense of mission, objectives, or Agenda.
A case in point is the IGNCA, which has been perennially in controversies for long. With a sprawling head office in the heart of Lutyens’ Delhi and regional centres in Bengaluru, Varanasi and Guwahati struggling to make any headway, IGNCA has decided now to start many more regional centres in Ranchi, Srinagar, Goa, Vadodara, Puducherry and Kerala. Land would be acquired, buildings constructed, a battery of staff appointed, with no agenda on what is to be done. The maintenance of these inefficient white elephants gets paid by tax-payers.
2. Enhancement of funding for India’s cultural industry through new participation models, including PPP.
China spends roughly 18 per cent of its budget on culture, education and science. The UK saw the support of an additional £8.9 million for culture in 2015, 25 per cent tax relief on orchestras and other creative activities, support to roll out WiFi in all state libraries and museums and so on.
Most European countries spend about 1-1.5 per cent of their public expenditure on culture and the quantum of private expenditure in culture too is substantial in the relatively affluent countries. From 0.12 per cent spend in 2009-10 to 0.13 per cent in 2014-15 of the government of India’s budget it certainly paints a sad picture of the priority that is given to a country with such an ancient heritage and culture.
The UK has the concept of the ‘arts council’, which acts as the nodal agency for all matters related to funding the arts. The funding here comes as a mix of two sources – direct government funding and a large component through private investments in culture called the National Lottery. This funds a wide range of activities – from theatre to digital art, reading to dance, music to literature, crafts to collections; and helps them achieve their mission statement of “great art and culture for everyone”. Close to £1 billion of public money was invested in 664 arts organisations from 1 April 2015 to 31 March 2018. Of this £69.5 million per year comes from the National Lottery invested in touring and working with children and young people.
The budgetary pie for culture in India too needs to expand, and for this the government exchequer need not be the only source. Augmenting the funding for culture by combining government intervention with private initiatives, corporate grants and even foreign investment especially in tourism related projects is a way out. The National Culture Fund (NCF) of the MoC has been largely a non-starter. More tax exemptions and reliefs for donations to the culture industry and bringing it within the ambit of mandatory corporate social responsibility (CSR) can drive more corporates and individuals to adopt culture projects. Important projects could be adopted by high net worth individuals and even go by their name if that is an incentive that someone is looking for.
3. Inclusion of the cultural element among young minds by broad-basing the education system to inculcate a sense of national identity, pride and self-worth.
Swami Vivekananda points out that the defect of present-day education is that it has no definite goal to pursue. A sculptor has a clear idea about what she wants to shape out of the marble rock; similarly a painter knows what she wants to paint. But a teacher has no goal in what she wishes to make of the children. The end of all education, Swamiji opined, was ‘man-making’, manifesting in our lives as perfection, which is the very nature of our inner self.
Studies have shown that there are various levels at which cultural education can be part of the syllabus right from kindergarten. The first level is knowledge-based which teaches our children the best of what has been created and is being currently created in the performing and visual arts and literature. The second level helps develop children’s critical faculties through the introduction of courses such as music, dance, drama, painting etc. and the positive impact that it has on the child’s cognitive development, IQ, and personality is scientifically documented. The third level is skill-based where the child learns how to participate and create new culture for themselves. Not everyone reaches here and a child exposed to say Indian classical music, need not necessarily become a performing musician. But the positive spin-offs of such exposure at a very early age are unimaginable. It would also create millions of jobs for so many artists, who are all not lucky to make a living out of their art, and can now be teachers in schools at various levels.
The arts fuel children’s curiosity and critical capacity. The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) ideals state them as every child’s birthright. It is vital that children engage with the arts early in their lives. The arts contribute to the development and wellbeing of children and young people. They inspire future audiences and the next generation of artists and leaders.
At the level of higher education, it is a real pity that we in India lack institutions on Indology/Indic Studies or civilisational and heritage studies. We have outsourced most of this to Western scholars and cry hoarse each time they come up with a biased and warped viewpoint of our country, its culture and faiths.
But is there a strong counter-narrative based on honest scholarship bereft of shallow jingoism or ideological biases? The answer is sadly, No!
The predominant agenda in education has made us feel perpetually inferior and ashamed of everything that is Indian. But then how long will we continue to quote Macaulay for creating the brown Englishmen or blame the Marxist intellectuals and wallow in self-pity, when the country has no agenda in mind to course-correct?
4. Looking at culture as a profit centre that provides jobs to people, enables skill development and vocational training and finds effective markets for the wares of artisans, weavers, artists, painters and craftsmen of the country in traditional and contemporary arts and crafts in both national and international platforms.
For long the Culture Ministry is seen as primarily a cost centre, which is also a grants body for various schemes and to which greedy artists flock to curry favours or lobby for awards. Sadly, the “soft power” of India’s culture and the manner in which this can be utilised for job creation, skill development and enhancing tourism in the country, which can transform it into a profit centre, has never been looked at.
Today with dwindling job opportunities many traditional artisan families are leaving their art to take up sundry factory jobs or enter low level tasks in the IT field and so on. The policy of the government must aim at providing economic stability to the craftsmen which would also give them a sense of pride in what they are doing for generations and also ensure enough returns so that they don’t abandon their hereditary task.
As part of the government’s Skill India Programme, a national institute for skill development in the traditional arts, crafts, textiles, handicrafts etc. should be set up or added to the NSDC. A curriculum and framework for certification must be created by the Institution in consultation with NSDC, NIOS, institutions of higher education and other stakeholders including private training providers. A sector skill council on traditional skills can be created by NSDC too to further give credibility to the certification. Indian arts, crafts, and textiles should find its way in every global market after being duly patented.
5. Clear roadmap to integrate culture to tourism initiatives and boost the country’s rich but latent, tourism potential.
As highlighted in the UN WTO 2013 report, tourism can account for 9 per cent of GDP (direct, indirect and induced), one in 11 jobs and 6 per cent of world exports.
Our heritage monuments, temples, palaces, mosques and forts count for among the best in the world and we have numerous world heritage monuments attested by UNESCO. But the infrastructure and upkeep around the monuments is abysmal. The Cultural Policy should dovetail with the tourism plan of the government in ensuring good infrastructure around monuments – clean, approachable and motorable roads, airport facilities, telephone lines that work, clean toilets and restaurants serving hygienic food.
This industry in itself can help employ millions of people in the area. The most exquisite monument cannot compensate for the ugliness of public defecation, garbage mounds and rivers of sewage – common in every Indian tourist spot.
Beggars found around the monuments and temples can be gainfully employed around the monument. Digital multi-media presentations/sound-light shows, multi-lingual audio guides, qualified tourist guides, sufficient information and pamphlets at the sites would draw innumerable tourists. Heritage walks enhance the whole tourism experience and can be conducted with private partnership. In all these important sites opportunities for historical and cultural immersion in the local culture – local dance and music forms, arts and crafts, cuisine etc. and a market for local artisans to sell their products to tourists can thus be made.
On the lines of the English Heritage, the government of India must seriously consider a national heritage trust. Gone are the days when people looked at history books for learning about their past and heritage. They, and increasingly tourists, are looking at experiences that bring history to life in an engaging way standing on the very spot where history happened. The trust needs to offer a hands-on experience that will be educational for children, national and international tourists who come to the country.
India must make a push for more of her monuments for UNESCO Listing. There is an economic case too for this.
In Luang Prabang, a World Heritage Site in Lao, the number of direct jobs increased from by about 10.3 per cent between 2000 and 2005 and the number of commercial establishments doubled, after it was UNESCO listed. As a result, direct employment in the tourism sector there has grown at a compounded annual rate of 8.5 per cent.
Ankor Wat in Cambodia was listed as World Heritage in 1992 and since then tourists arrivals have grown at an impressive 21 per cent (CAGR) annually. In 1993, the tourist arrivals in Ankor Wat were about 1.2 lakh and in 2010 the recorded figures were over 25 lakh. Tourism receipts there too grew from $100 million in 1995 to $1,786 million in 2010.
6. Institutions for dissemination of cultural knowledge to the public at large through various media; Online being the biggest backbone for a “Digital India”.
A lot of the country’s tangible and intangible heritage needs to be preserved for posterity and also documented. We have lacked a sense of documentation and showcasing of our own very rich past.
Creation of institutions such as a national cultural audio-visual archive that can also be accessed online by everyone, and modernisation of our existing archives (National Archives of India, National Film Archives and State Archives etc.) and libraries, through technology and digitisation would create lasting legacy institutions for our country.
Museums are also one of the most significant revenue earners for developed nations, through tourist footfalls. The five most popular museums and galleries in both London and Paris receive more than 20 million visits between them while Shanghai’s and Istanbul’s ‘top five’ attract more than six million. ‘Newer’ cities too are keen to develop their museums and galleries. Singapore alone has more than 50 museums, and 40 per cent of its residents visit a museum or gallery each year. About 100 museums open annually in China, peaking at nearly 400 in 2011 alone.
Is it not a national shame that just one museum in Paris (the Louvre) gets more than 1.5 times the number of visitors that all of India gets in terms of foreign visitors according to a past statistic of the Indian Tourism Department (9.72 million versus 6.29 million)?
Just in terms of international scale and standards, if we see the three cities with the highest number of national museums: Shanghai (27); Paris (24); Berlin (18) or with three cities with highest number of other museums: London (162); Berlin (140); New York (126) and even with cities with very little history, it becomes amply clear that we in India fall woefully short.
It is sad that in independent India there have been very few new museums that have been developed. Government museums make up for 90 per cent of the roughly 1,000 museums in India. In 2011, UNESCO published a scathing report on the appalling condition of India’s top eight museums, citing sub-standard maintenance, lighting and signage among other issues.
But at the core are deep-rooted issues of archaic policies, lack of autonomy and skilled manpower and under-staffing. They are banned from all kinds of partnerships with private individuals or organisations and have to depend only on central funding for day-to-day operations. Professional salaries are not given to trained museum staff and hence modern curatorial, display and conservation methods are not followed in many cases.
While it might not be entirely feasible to develop museums in every city and town of India, major centres in the country could have the ‘museum district’ (like in London) or the ‘museum mile’ (in New York) set up with public private partnership to become a showcase of the culture and arts of the entire state and also for different facets of a state/city (For example – science, IT, sound, defence, cricket, etc. which have developed indigenously in Bengaluru).
In addition to national museums, regional and community museums need to be encouraged and provided for to showcase regional culture and heritage. For instance, a botanical museum for the Western Ghats would be a unique asset. Going to museums must be a joyful and a deeply enriching and educational experience both for tourists and for Indians. Can we mention even one such museum in India today?
In line with the Government’s Digital India Project, the online medium should be used to the maximum extent to conserve, create and disseminate cultural artifacts of India.
7. Showcase and educate the international community about the best of India’s culture, heritage, traditional knowledge, performing and visual arts.
In most international forums, India and her culture are not showcased to the extent that it can be to depict its richness in all its glory. Through the network of embassies of India and consulates, regular dissemination of cultural artifacts of India, the best of the performing and visual arts, films and documentaries, books and literature should be periodically organised.
The soft power of Indian culture can and must be used to create jobs, not necessarily always in India, but for Indians across the world. The demand for Indian cuisine across the world itself is a market that is dying to be explored. Instead, what we find is that in most countries, so-called Indian restaurants are run by other nationals.
International co‐operation should be sought for setting up India studies chairs in major universities abroad where Indian scholars are invited to research and teach about India, her history and culture rather than leave it to Western scholars to create a warped view of Indian history and religions. Cultural cooperation agreements with various countries to get the best of what is happening world-wide to administer and disseminate culture is the need of the hour.
Like the recent inclusion of World Yoga Day, more art forms – classical music, dance, classical languages and traditional knowledge etc. should receive international recognition considering they are thousands of years old. An element of Indian performing arts and literature must be a given in all the major festivals across the world. We, and our culture, need to be seen, understood and appreciated.
An important aspect of international cultural co‐operation is a sizeable programme of scholarships/fellowships in different disciplines given to foreign scholars and artists to come to India and to Indian scholars to visit foreign countries. Most of these scholarship programmes need to be on a reciprocal basis. Cross-cultural projects and interdisciplinary studies can herald new ideas and avenues in the field of culture and can act as a soft tool for international cooperation and diplomacy.
Rabindranath Tagore had said: “Everything comes to us that belongs to us if we create the capacity to receive it.” The time has come now to build this capacity in the culture industry of India and make it a robust and streamlined one that not only provides jobs and revenue to millions, but creates a sense of national identity, self-esteem, pride and lasting legacy for posterity.
While it is essential that we become an economic and military super-power, we would be a highly impoverished nation if, after a generation, our cultural heritage and identity is lost. As mentioned earlier, culture is not always about doling out grants, holding mega-festivals, or just about sob stories around lack of preservation. The economics of culture and the way it can enhance skills, augment jobs, and add to the country’s might by being both a profitable industry and also as soft-power diplomacy needs innovative and out of the box thinking.
Recent Posts
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.