In her first Independence Day address to the nation as President, Droupadi Murmu, the 15th President of India, said that the next milestone for the country would be to complete 100 years of Independence and that by the year 2047, India would give shape to the vision of our Constitution makers, including Dr. Bhimrao Ambedkar.
Why were Directive Principles added to the Constitution?
- Article 37 of the Constitution states that the DPSPs shall not be enforceable by any court, but the principles laid down are fundamental in the governance of the country and it is the duty of the government to apply these principles in making laws.
- These Principles contained in Part IV of the Constitution (Articles 36-41) lay down various goals that the state should strive to achieve while governing the country, such as securing a social order for the promotion of the welfare of people, achieving economic equality, equal justice by providing free legal aid, securing the rights to education, and framing a Uniform Civil Code.
- At the time of framing the Constitution, the challenge before its drafters was to satisfy all the people of India, lay down the foundations of an equitable society and welfare state, and strike a balance between individualism and socialism, which is what led them to borrow the concept of DPSPs from the 1937 Constitution of Ireland.
Dr. Ambedkar said in the Constituent Assembly debates that while we had established a political democracy upon gaining independence, “it was also the desire that we lay down economic democracy as our ideal” and give direction as to what our social order ought to be like. He said that there were various ways and schools of thought to achieve this idea, because of which Directive Principles were not made to be “rigid” or enforceable by law, but fundamental to governance. He had described them as “socialistic” and a “novel feature” of the Constitution.
Multiple members had argued in the November 1948 debate on DPSPs, that without legal enforceability, the principles would remain mere “pious wishes”. It was contended that socio-economic principles such as these had been ignored and exploited under colonial rule and it was necessary to give them effect in independent India.
Multiple Supreme Court judgements have given importance to DPSPs in the past, arguing that they give meaning to Fundamental Rights and the two should be harmonized and balanced if they were to maintain social order and empower people.
Have they been reflected in our policies?
Directive Principles were embedded in the Constitution as ideal and transformative social and economic goals that would be incumbent upon future governments to achieve through their policies.
M.C Chagla, former Chief Justice of India during the early years of Independence, had said that “if all these principles are fully carried out, our country would indeed be a heaven on earth.”
Article 38
- The first Principle directs the state to promote the welfare of people by creating a social order where there is social, political, and economic justice.
- It says that the state shall strive to minimise income inequalities and those in status and opportunities among people and regions.
The debate over welfare schemes versus “freebies” is not a new one and has raged for decades. Multiple governments have enacted welfare schemes such as Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA), the national public distribution scheme, the Mid-day Meal Scheme, the Food Security Act, and farm and gas subsidies.
MGNREGA, for example, started by the UPA government in 2006, guarantees 100 days of employment a year in unskilled work to at least one member of every rural household.
Parliament was recently informed that the demand for jobs under MGNREGA for May had increased from 1.64 core in 2015 to 3.07 crore in 2022. However, more than ₹4 crore was pending from the Centre’s side in wages to the States under the scheme.
While in the case of States doling out freebies to influence the electorate, experts have said that India could face the prospect of sub-national bankruptcies.
The chairperson of the 15th Fifteenth Finance Commission, NK Singh, recently said that ‘cheap’ freebies are expensive for the economy, quality of life, and social cohesion over the long run.
Chief Justice of India NV Ramana said, days before August 15, that there has to be a final disciple to freebies and they cannot be called welfare schemes.
As for achieving income equality, the World Inequality Report revealed that India is now among the most unequal countries in the world. Per the report, 57 per cent of national income was accumulated in the hands of the affluent top 10 per cent of the population.
The report stated that while “socialist-inspired Five Year plans contributed” to reducing the share of the top 10 per cent who had 50 per cent of the income under colonial rule, to 35-40 per cent in the early decades of Independence, since the mid-1980s deregulation and liberalisation policies, “one of the most extreme increases in income and wealth inequality” has been observed.
Article 44
This principle pertains to securing a Uniform Civil Code or a uniform law for all religious communities in personal matters of divorce, marriage, succession and so on.
However, the stand taken by Dr Ambedkar in the Constituent Assembly debates has survived the years and India still does not have a UCC — he believed that a UCC was desirable but should, for the moment, remain voluntary.
Currently, each religion has a separate set of personal laws and the codification of personal laws has historically generated protests.
In the Shah Bano case of 1985, the Supreme Court lamented that Article 44 remained a “dead letter”. The Court ruled that section 125 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, relating to maintenance applied to all, regardless of religion.
But the Rajiv Gandhi government introduced a new law for Muslim women— the Muslim Women (Protection on Divorce Act), 1986—which nullified this judgement. Only one State- Goa, currently has a UCC.
Article 45
This article says that the State should endeavor to provide free and compulsory education, within 10 years of the Constitution’s commencement, for all children until they complete 14 years of age.
However, education was made a right well past 10 years of the Constitution’s coming into force.
In 2002, with the 86th Amendment of the Constitution, Article 21A was added, making free and compulsory education for children aged six to 14 years a Fundamental Right.
Then in 2009, the Right of Education (RTE) Act was passed. Yet, more than a decade later, there is significant debate about the parameters through which that promise is supposed to be realised.
Education Minister said in August last year that while 35 crore children were getting educated in schools, there was a whopping 15 crore out-of-school children in the country.
The Act’s mandatory provision requires government/aided/ private schools to reserve 25 per cent of their seats for children between six to 14 for free education. This has created a problem, with several children being denied education.
UNESCO estimated that 1.3 billion children and young people — that is, 70 per cent of the world’s student population— were affected by COVID-related closures of educational institutions.
Article 39A
The Constitution (42nd Amendment) Act, 1976, inserted Article 39A to provide “equal justice and free legal aid”.
To this end, the Legal Services Authorities Act, 1987, was enacted by Parliament and it came into force in 1995 “to provide free and competent legal services to weaker sections of the society” and to “organise Lok Adalats (literally, ‘People’s Court’) to secure justice on the basis of equal opportunity”.
National Lok Adalats (NLA) are an alternate dispute resolution mechanism, regularly organised to help parties reach a compromise. NLAs deal with motor-accident claims, disputes related to public-utility services, dishonour of cheques, and land, labour and matrimonial disputes (except divorce).
2021 data from the National Legal Services Authority (NALSA) shows that Lok Adalats organised across the country from 2016 to 2020 disposed of 52,46,415 cases, demonstrating speed and efficiency. NLAs also settle a huge number of cases across the country in a single day.
With formal Indian judiciary experiencing a well-recorded pendency, litigants approach Lok Adalats, as a party-driven alternative.
However, experts have long been concerned about the quality of justice in Lok Adalats.
The Supreme Court, in State of Punjab vs Jalour Singh (2008), held that a Lok Adalat is purely conciliatory and it has no adjudicatory or judicial function. As compromise is its central idea, there is a valid concern that in the endeavour for speedy disposal of cases, it undermines the idea of justice.
Article 43
It calls for providing a living wage, suitable working conditions, and a decent standard of living for all workers– industrial, agricultural or otherwise.
Dr. Ambedkar, a long-time advocate for labour rights, inculcated in the DPSPs the idea of “real economic freedom”, meaning workers are not forced to take up any job paying less than minimum wage owing to economic compulsions.
Labour laws, according to experts, are meant to mitigate the imbalance of power, which has only risen with the advent of the platform or gig economy, and the rise of casualisation and precarious employment.
Indian labour laws have been criticised for setting up a labour bureaucracy prone to corruption, for workers losing jobs under the cover of liberalisation and globalisation, and for inefficient adjudicatory mechanisms.
This was seen during the pandemic when multiple states granted sweeping exemptions from legal provisions aimed at protecting labourers and employees for achieving economic revival.
Further, India is among the countries with the lowest participation of women in the national labour workforce.
Other Principles
The remaining DPSPs relate to maternity-related provisions, equal pay for equal work, setting up of co-operative societies and village panchayats, increasing child nutrition levels, environmental protection, and respecting international law.
Some of these principles were also translated in the early years of Independence such as the separation of the judiciary from the executive and the setting up of village panchayats.
Maternal welfare schemes have also been launched, fulfilling some of the mandates of the DPSPs.
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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.