The Natural Resources Data Management System (NRDMS) is an initiative of Department of Science and Technology of Government of India, conceived to help Policy makers and planners to formulate developmental strategy. In doing so, they have the advantage of the progress made in recent years in the methodologies designed to collect, archive and process the multidisciplinary ground data
This basic data on land, its people and the natural resources has been collected since several decades by multiple national and private organizations on varying scales. Initially, the size and data population was restricted only to major parameters but gradually with advancement of the science and development of methodologies in data collection, it was possible to gather a wealth of data over a large terrain for several parameters in a short time and store in a more convenient format for retrieval at a desired time, for use in governance or for research purposes.
This changed scenario, especially the support and application of computers and tools of Information Technology, with application of indigenously developed GIS package, Geo Referenced Area Management (GRAM++) on Windows 95/NT platform has enabled quicker data mining and its use. The development of spatial data management tools has further made the application and research in this field possible giving impetus to micro level, integrated panchayat and district level planning. India has been making tremendous inroads in the sphere of information technology and has been keeping pace with the developments being made internationally. It is rightly being considered to be one of the main sources, globally, of intellectual force behind the new developments taking place in this field.
Several governmental agencies such as:
- Survey of India (SOI),
- Geological Survey of India (GSI),
- Indian Bureau of Mines (IBM),
- Space Application Centre (SAC) of ISRO,
- Snow and Avalanche Study Establishment (SASE) of DRDO and its numerous laboratories,
- National Centre for Earth Science Studies (NCESS),
- Wadia Institute of Himalayan Geology (WIHG),
- Indian Institute of Geomagnetism (IIG),
- Botanical Survey of India (BSI),
- Zoological Survey of India (ZSI),
- National Atlas & Thematic Mapping Organization (NMTMO),
- Central Ground Water Board (CGWB),
- National Institute of Hydrology (NIH),
- Census of India,
- Bureau of Soil Survey and Land Use Planning (NBSS & LUP),
- India Meteorological Department (IMD),
- Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology (IITM),
- National Medium Range Weather Forecasting (NMRWF) Indian National Centre for Ocean Information Services (INCOIS),
- National Centre for Seismology (NCS), National Centre for Antarctic and Ocean Research (NCAOR),
- National Institute of Oceanography (NIO),
- Centre for Marine Living Resources and Ecology (CMLRE),
- Fishery Survey of India (FSI), Central Marine Fishery Research Institute (CMFRI),
- Wild Life Institute of India (WII), etc are engaged in collecting, updating and collating the database in the field of their respective expertise.
As a result of such concerted efforts, the nation has developed huge databases that cover nearly all important fields of living and non living natural resources, basic data on demographic details, socio-economics, agro-economy, rainfall and other met parameters as well as basic data on infrastructure with village/ district as the basic unit.
The SOI, for example, has prepared topographical maps of entire India on varying scales but more commonly on 1:50,000, which give information of infrastructure such as roads, railway lines, rivers, canals and all important structures that can be projected on that scale.
The lateral distances and vertical heights are depicted. The contours along with heights above mean sea level of some triangulation points help in linking the sites to such trigonometric positions. The use of aerial photography and photogrammetric tools has enabled SOI to map difficult Himalayan and other inaccessible terrains. These maps serve as a basic tool for plotting other detailed subject wise database and prepare hundreds of thematic maps such as soil and agronomic maps (Fig 1), satellite image maps (Fig 2), Seismic zonation map maps (Fig 3) and maps showing distribution of economic minerals. Geological maps, earthquake risk and coastal management maps etc. may be quoted in this line. The list is unending.
Fig 1. Soil map of Karnataka.
Fig. 2. Satellite Map of parts of Bengaluru (Roads and Buildings)
Fig.3. Seismic Zonation map of India
Applicability in Governance:
Most of the above information is linked to location of the site of data in 3-D form or in latitudes, longitudes and vertical height (the coordinate system) i.e. it is spatial. The integration of Geographical Information System (GIS) and Global Positioning System (GPS) into spatial datasets has increased the accuracy and ease of adoptability of the information for various governance purposes. Need for collating this vast data and information into a system that can be used by governmental and private bodies has given rise to the National Spatial Data Infrastructure (NSDI).
This spatial information on natural resources, cultural and environmental aspects is available at the local/state and national levels for concerned authorities for putting to use in decision making towards formulation and execution of socio-economic/ developmental programs for communities. The spatial database will come handy for infra-structure development and disaster management, especially during natural calamities such as floods, droughts, landslides, earthquakes etc.
The proposed developments of “e-superhighways” and “going digital” movement of Government of India, have opened new vistas of data sharing. The fast way of sharing the data would greatly help in coordination and cooperation efforts between sister organizations and adjoining districts as well as between state and national Bodies, especially, for hazard mitigation activities.
To quote some examples: the mapping of active landslide areas, mapping of glacial lakes under threat of outburst (GLOF), preparation of microzonation maps of earthquake prone districts – installation of seismometers and activation of Tsunami prediction Centres, mapping of coastal regions, especially of Andhra Pradesh, Orissa, Tamil Nadu likely to be inundated by cyclones and linkages of this and similar data with district/ state and central agencies demonstrates how the National Spatial Data Infrastructure can be of immense use to communities at ground level.
ISRO’s Annual Report for 2016-17 describes ‘the societal services offered by INSAT / GSAT satellites in the area of tele-education and telemedicine and that of the applications of Remote Sensing projects at National, State and Local levels through well-established multi-pronged implementation under NNRMS in the country. The Indian Remote Sensing Satellite constellation has helped in Agricultural Crops Inventory, Agricultural Drought, Forest Fire, Landslides and Earthquake Monitoring, Gas pipeline monitoring, Groundwater Prospects Mapping, Inventory, Monitoring of Glacial Lakes / Water Bodies and Satellite Aided Search & Rescue.’
Some of the societal programs where NRDMS / NSDI database is going to be developed for used by multiple agencies are :
- a) Development of village level geospatial information system, especially for health related issues,
- b) Revival of village ponds to store rain water to make up for water scarcity ,
- c) Ground water availability/ aquifer mapping in drought prone areas
- d) Water resource availability in different water sheds, or drinking and agricultural, purposes
- e) Geological and geotechnical mapping of vulnerable areas w .r .t. landslides in Uttarakhand and other Himalayan regions,
- f) Land records and land management
- g) Energy resource- thermal / hydro / solar
- h) Natural Disaster mitigation
- i) Identification and mapping of proglacial lakes that have potential of breaching.
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On March 31, the World Economic Forum (WEF) released its annual Gender Gap Report 2021. The Global Gender Gap report is an annual report released by the WEF. The gender gap is the difference between women and men as reflected in social, political, intellectual, cultural, or economic attainments or attitudes. The gap between men and women across health, education, politics, and economics widened for the first time since records began in 2006.
[wptelegram-join-channel link=”https://t.me/s/upsctree” text=”Join @upsctree on Telegram”]No need to remember all the data, only pick out few important ones to use in your answers.
The Global gender gap index aims to measure this gap in four key areas : health, education, economics, and politics. It surveys economies to measure gender disparity by collating and analyzing data that fall under four indices : economic participation and opportunity, educational attainment, health and survival, and political empowerment.
The 2021 Global Gender Gap Index benchmarks 156 countries on their progress towards gender parity. The index aims to serve as a compass to track progress on relative gaps between women and men in health, education, economy, and politics.
Although no country has achieved full gender parity, the top two countries (Iceland and Finland) have closed at least 85% of their gap, and the remaining seven countries (Lithuania, Namibia, New Zealand, Norway, Sweden, Rwanda, and Ireland) have closed at least 80% of their gap. Geographically, the global top 10 continues to be dominated by Nordic countries, with —Iceland, Norway, Finland, and Sweden—in the top five.
The top 10 is completed by one country from Asia Pacific (New Zealand 4th), two Sub-Saharan countries (Namibia, 6th and Rwanda, 7th, one country from Eastern Europe (the new entrant to the top 10, Lithuania, 8th), and another two Western European countries (Ireland, 9th, and Switzerland, 10th, another country in the top-10 for the first time).There is a relatively equitable distribution of available income, resources, and opportunities for men and women in these countries. The tremendous gender gaps are identified primarily in the Middle East, Africa, and South Asia.
Here, we can discuss the overall global gender gap scores across the index’s four main components : Economic Participation and Opportunity, Educational Attainment, Health and Survival, and Political Empowerment.
The indicators of the four main components are
(1) Economic Participation and Opportunity:
o Labour force participation rate,
o wage equality for similar work,
o estimated earned income,
o Legislators, senior officials, and managers,
o Professional and technical workers.
(2) Educational Attainment:
o Literacy rate (%)
o Enrollment in primary education (%)
o Enrollment in secondary education (%)
o Enrollment in tertiary education (%).
(3) Health and Survival:
o Sex ratio at birth (%)
o Healthy life expectancy (years).
(4) Political Empowerment:
o Women in Parliament (%)
o Women in Ministerial positions (%)
o Years with a female head of State (last 50 years)
o The share of tenure years.
The objective is to shed light on which factors are driving the overall average decline in the global gender gap score. The analysis results show that this year’s decline is mainly caused by a reversal in performance on the Political Empowerment gap.
Global Trends and Outcomes:
– Globally, this year, i.e., 2021, the average distance completed to gender parity gap is 68% (This means that the remaining gender gap to close stands at 32%) a step back compared to 2020 (-0.6 percentage points). These figures are mainly driven by a decline in the performance of large countries. On its current trajectory, it will now take 135.6 years to close the gender gap worldwide.
– The gender gap in Political Empowerment remains the largest of the four gaps tracked, with only 22% closed to date, having further widened since the 2020 edition of the report by 2.4 percentage points. Across the 156 countries covered by the index, women represent only 26.1% of some 35,500 Parliament seats and 22.6% of over 3,400 Ministers worldwide. In 81 countries, there has never been a woman head of State as of January 15, 2021. At the current rate of progress, the World Economic Forum estimates that it will take 145.5 years to attain gender parity in politics.
– The gender gap in Economic Participation and Opportunity remains the second-largest of the four key gaps tracked by the index. According to this year’s index results, 58% of this gap has been closed so far. The gap has seen marginal improvement since the 2020 edition of the report, and as a result, we estimate that it will take another 267.6 years to close.
– Gender gaps in Educational Attainment and Health and Survival are nearly closed. In Educational Attainment, 95% of this gender gap has been closed globally, with 37 countries already attaining gender parity. However, the ‘last mile’ of progress is proceeding slowly. The index estimates that it will take another 14.2 years to close this gap on its current trajectory completely.
In Health and Survival, 96% of this gender gap has been closed, registering a marginal decline since last year (not due to COVID-19), and the time to close this gap remains undefined. For both education and health, while progress is higher than economy and politics in the global data, there are important future implications of disruptions due to the pandemic and continued variations in quality across income, geography, race, and ethnicity.
India-Specific Findings:
India had slipped 28 spots to rank 140 out of the 156 countries covered. The pandemic causing a disproportionate impact on women jeopardizes rolling back the little progress made in the last decades-forcing more women to drop off the workforce and leaving them vulnerable to domestic violence.
India’s poor performance on the Global Gender Gap report card hints at a serious wake-up call and learning lessons from the Nordic region for the Government and policy makers.
Within the 156 countries covered, women hold only 26 percent of Parliamentary seats and 22 percent of Ministerial positions. India, in some ways, reflects this widening gap, where the number of Ministers declined from 23.1 percent in 2019 to 9.1 percent in 2021. The number of women in Parliament stands low at 14.4 percent. In India, the gender gap has widened to 62.5 %, down from 66.8% the previous year.
It is mainly due to women’s inadequate representation in politics, technical and leadership roles, a decrease in women’s labor force participation rate, poor healthcare, lagging female to male literacy ratio, and income inequality.
The gap is the widest on the political empowerment dimension, with economic participation and opportunity being next in line. However, the gap on educational attainment and health and survival has been practically bridged.
India is the third-worst performer among South Asian countries, with Pakistan and Afghanistan trailing and Bangladesh being at the top. The report states that the country fared the worst in political empowerment, regressing from 23.9% to 9.1%.
Its ranking on the health and survival dimension is among the five worst performers. The economic participation and opportunity gap saw a decline of 3% compared to 2020, while India’s educational attainment front is in the 114th position.
India has deteriorated to 51st place from 18th place in 2020 on political empowerment. Still, it has slipped to 155th position from 150th position in 2020 on health and survival, 151st place in economic participation and opportunity from 149th place, and 114th place for educational attainment from 112th.
In 2020 reports, among the 153 countries studied, India is the only country where the economic gender gap of 64.6% is larger than the political gender gap of 58.9%. In 2021 report, among the 156 countries, the economic gender gap of India is 67.4%, 3.8% gender gap in education, 6.3% gap in health and survival, and 72.4% gender gap in political empowerment. In health and survival, the gender gap of the sex ratio at birth is above 9.1%, and healthy life expectancy is almost the same.
Discrimination against women has also been reflected in Health and Survival subindex statistics. With 93.7% of this gap closed to date, India ranks among the bottom five countries in this subindex. The wide sex ratio at birth gaps is due to the high incidence of gender-based sex-selective practices. Besides, more than one in four women has faced intimate violence in her lifetime.The gender gap in the literacy rate is above 20.1%.
Yet, gender gaps persist in literacy : one-third of women are illiterate (34.2%) than 17.6% of men. In political empowerment, globally, women in Parliament is at 128th position and gender gap of 83.2%, and 90% gap in a Ministerial position. The gap in wages equality for similar work is above 51.8%. On health and survival, four large countries Pakistan, India, Vietnam, and China, fare poorly, with millions of women there not getting the same access to health as men.
The pandemic has only slowed down in its tracks the progress India was making towards achieving gender parity. The country urgently needs to focus on “health and survival,” which points towards a skewed sex ratio because of the high incidence of gender-based sex-selective practices and women’s economic participation. Women’s labour force participation rate and the share of women in technical roles declined in 2020, reducing the estimated earned income of women, one-fifth of men.
Learning from the Nordic region, noteworthy participation of women in politics, institutions, and public life is the catalyst for transformational change. Women need to be equal participants in the labour force to pioneer the societal changes the world needs in this integral period of transition.
Every effort must be directed towards achieving gender parallelism by facilitating women in leadership and decision-making positions. Social protection programmes should be gender-responsive and account for the differential needs of women and girls. Research and scientific literature also provide unequivocal evidence that countries led by women are dealing with the pandemic more effectively than many others.
Gendered inequality, thereby, is a global concern. India should focus on targeted policies and earmarked public and private investments in care and equalized access. Women are not ready to wait for another century for equality. It’s time India accelerates its efforts and fight for an inclusive, equal, global recovery.
India will not fully develop unless both women and men are equally supported to reach their full potential. There are risks, violations, and vulnerabilities women face just because they are women. Most of these risks are directly linked to women’s economic, political, social, and cultural disadvantages in their daily lives. It becomes acute during crises and disasters.
With the prevalence of gender discrimination, and social norms and practices, women become exposed to the possibility of child marriage, teenage pregnancy, child domestic work, poor education and health, sexual abuse, exploitation, and violence. Many of these manifestations will not change unless women are valued more.
[wptelegram-join-channel link=”https://t.me/s/upsctree” text=”Join @upsctree on Telegram”]2021 WEF Global Gender Gap report, which confirmed its 2016 finding of a decline in worldwide progress towards gender parity.
Over 2.8 billion women are legally restricted from having the same choice of jobs as men. As many as 104 countries still have laws preventing women from working in specific jobs, 59 countries have no laws on sexual harassment in the workplace, and it is astonishing that a handful of countries still allow husbands to legally stop their wives from working.
Globally, women’s participation in the labour force is estimated at 63% (as against 94% of men who participate), but India’s is at a dismal 25% or so currently. Most women are in informal and vulnerable employment—domestic help, agriculture, etc—and are always paid less than men.
Recent reports from Assam suggest that women workers in plantations are paid much less than men and never promoted to supervisory roles. The gender wage gap is about 24% globally, and women have lost far more jobs than men during lockdowns.
The problem of gender disparity is compounded by hurdles put up by governments, society and businesses: unequal access to social security schemes, banking services, education, digital services and so on, even as a glass ceiling has kept leadership roles out of women’s reach.
Yes, many governments and businesses had been working on parity before the pandemic struck. But the global gender gap, defined by differences reflected in the social, political, intellectual, cultural and economic attainments or attitudes of men and women, will not narrow in the near future without all major stakeholders working together on a clear agenda—that of economic growth by inclusion.
The WEF report estimates 135 years to close the gap at our current rate of progress based on four pillars: educational attainment, health, economic participation and political empowerment.
India has slipped from rank 112 to 140 in a single year, confirming how hard women were hit by the pandemic. Pakistan and Afghanistan are the only two Asian countries that fared worse.
Here are a few things we must do:
One, frame policies for equal-opportunity employment. Use technology and artificial intelligence to eliminate biases of gender, caste, etc, and select candidates at all levels on merit. Numerous surveys indicate that women in general have a better chance of landing jobs if their gender is not known to recruiters.
Two, foster a culture of gender sensitivity. Take a review of current policies and move from gender-neutral to gender-sensitive. Encourage and insist on diversity and inclusion at all levels, and promote more women internally to leadership roles. Demolish silos to let women grab potential opportunities in hitherto male-dominant roles. Work-from-home has taught us how efficiently women can manage flex-timings and productivity.
Three, deploy corporate social responsibility (CSR) funds for the education and skilling of women and girls at the bottom of the pyramid. CSR allocations to toilet building, the PM-Cares fund and firms’ own trusts could be re-channelled for this.
Four, get more women into research and development (R&D) roles. A study of over 4,000 companies found that more women in R&D jobs resulted in radical innovation. It appears women score far higher than men in championing change. If you seek growth from affordable products and services for low-income groups, women often have the best ideas.
Five, break barriers to allow progress. Cultural and structural issues must be fixed. Unconscious biases and discrimination are rampant even in highly-esteemed organizations. Establish fair and transparent human resource policies.
Six, get involved in local communities to engage them. As Michael Porter said, it is not possible for businesses to sustain long-term shareholder value without ensuring the welfare of the communities they exist in. It is in the best interest of enterprises to engage with local communities to understand and work towards lowering cultural and other barriers in society. It will also help connect with potential customers, employees and special interest groups driving the gender-equity agenda and achieve better diversity.