*Disclaimer-This is another AS-IS editorial without any modification by UPSCTREE Team, The writer/speaker is retired Lieutenant General Syed Ata Hasnain and the editorial is excerpt of his speech in inter-faith dialogue forum.
India’s 180 million Muslims have almost completely remained aloof from the shenanigans of violent extremism which plagues its neighbour and so many other nations.
You cannot hold this great faith of a billion people ransom to the rabid views of a few who want it pegged to where it was 14 centuries ago.
This is an adaptation of a speech made by the author at a recent inter faith event.
When we have esteemed guests from Islamic and other countries visiting India one of the major responsibilities of Indian Muslims is to make them aware of the existence of Islam in India and its rich, inclusive nature in terms of its contribution to India’s cultural scene. Also, it is necessary to make them aware of how much Islam enriched itself through its interactive existence with other major faiths of India and what it absorbed from the harmonious environment of the subcontinent. Through the turbulent times since Islam has been challenged from within, by a minority which wishes for it not to progress but rather regress, India’s Muslims have shown a beacon to the followers of the faith.
India’s 180 million Muslims have almost completely remained aloof from the shenanigans of violent extremism which plagues its neighbour and so many other nations. I am one in this congregation who comes from a profession perceived by society to be associated with violence. I have been a soldier for 40 years and have had hundreds of thousands of fellow soldiers under me, executing my directions and orders. So for me to be speaking about the message of peace may appear a bit awkward and a bit paradoxical. But let me clarify right here that the choice of using my knowledge and skills as a leader and a soldier was always based upon justice, fairness and minimalistic approach; something I imbibed in the Indian army.
I am a human, a proud Indian and a Muslim. I am aware how my faith is perceived worldwide today as a faith devoted to intolerance and the employment of violence as a means to achieve the ends of what is misperceived as the aim of Islam, i.e. the spread of the faith by means foul and fair and the domination of the world. I consider those within my faith who act and project such a perception as enemies of the faith and enemies of humanity, and I shall justify my belief.
Faith is no doubt based upon belief, implicit belief, but it is also based upon rationale and the power of intellect and human choice brought on by the capability to reason, apply and absorb.
Islam, in reality, is founded upon equanimity, balance, moderation, and facilitation. As Tawfik Hamid, author of Inside Jihad , writes, “Islam rejects extremism, radicalism and fanaticism—just as all noble, heavenly religions reject them—considering them as recalcitrant ways and forms of injustice”.
Furthermore, extremism is an aberration that has been experienced by all nations, races, and religions. The singling out of Islam and its followers in the current times is only because of the contextual situation where enemies of Islam, many within the faith have employed practices which are alien to its values and beliefs and civilised societies in general. The human race was created to progress not regress, to discover the undiscovered, in science and arts, in nature and space.
You cannot hold this great faith of a billion people ransom to the rabid views of a few who want it pegged to where it was 14 centuries ago. Islam, like all great faiths is progressive, tolerant and transparent, with respect for all other faiths.
It is only appropriate to outline and recall how I developed respect for different faiths even while following the tenets of Islam, which is my faith. My parents followed Islam and set for me examples of how to be a good Muslim. I was educated in a Christian school where I read the Bible almost like a textbook and attended chapel, singing hymns and psalms in praise of the same God to whom we all pray. During long school holidays, I continued Islamic practices at home thus imbibing a dual faith Catholicism.
On joining the Indian Army, I willingly became a part of my father’s regiment, comprising only Hindus, whose culture and best practices as a faith I imbibed. My subordinate soldiers fully respected my sentiments, and I respected theirs. They invited me to lead prayers at the unit temple even as I educated them on the tenets of Islam to which they listened with rapt attention. It is I who insisted that the unit temple flag with the huge embossed ‘Om’ on it would always be atop the leading vehicle of our convoy when we moved en masse for training or operations.
Take it from me; there is nothing like the power of conversation and discussion between followers of different faiths who consider their faiths as alternative ways to reach Him, the one and only master of this world, the maker of us all.
In the conflict zone of Jammu and Kashmir, where I had the good fortune to serve many years, I attempted to bring interfaith contact and interaction as a means of resolving mistrust and misperception. Many of my troops that were non-Muslim invited local maulvis and elders to their camps with the intent that they wished to learn more about Islam. For a few weeks the maulvis and elders were only too happy to part with information on the meaning and practices of Islam, but after that they were curious to know more about the faith of their hosts and the hosts did not disappoint them. The best interfaith harmony emerged in all these areas where this practice was adopted.
While serving the United Nations and attending knowledge programs across the world, I have attended multi-faith ceremonies with practised ease with people questioning me and many of my colleagues from the Indian Army as to how we were so comfortable, with different faiths. It is with pride that we would inform them of the nature of India’s composite society.
In a world beset with aberrations in perception, where science and technology should be acting as connectors and facilitators of dialogue across faiths, we find the spread of abhorrent ideas. Why have the younger segments of society (even from other faiths) picked up the mistaken tenets of Islam, from the wrong people and done all the wrong acts? It is because the right people are all quiet, the right ideas and values of the faith have never been brought before those who are hungry for knowledge and debate.
Correctness needs courage. Morality needs courage. Kindness needs courage and courage is something which has never been missing in Islam. The courage we need here is the one to deeply study the faith and convey the true meaning and understanding so that societies the world over will respect the followers of Islam for their wisdom, their progress for mankind and the pursuance of peace.
It is unfortunate that the pull of geopolitics on faith is being harnessed for power and not for peace. Islam is about a way of life, about being good human beings bearing a respectful value system and not for the pursuance of power to harness resources for just a few. Islam is about equality and not about subjugation.
Quoting from the Royal Court of Jordan’s Amman Message, a message from all the learned leaders within Islam –“ On religious and moral grounds, we denounce the contemporary concept of terrorism that is associated with wrongful practices, whatever their source and form may be. Such acts are represented by aggression against human life in an oppressive form that transgresses the rulings of God, frightening those who are secure, violating peaceful civilians, finishing off the wounded, and killing prisoners; and they employ unethical means, such as destroying buildings and ransacking cities”.
It is God who brings life to this world; only He has the power and right to take it away, and He has not delegated that power to humans, unless in the pursuit of true justice.
For us in India, where the largest Muslim minority in the world exists, we wish to be model citizens; pursuing the tenets of our faith and respecting the tenets of all other faiths and love for the nation. We are one of the few in this world who have the privilege and pleasure to share our school benches with those of other faiths, visit their homes, respect their beliefs and partake in the joys of each other’s festivals.
We are from the land of Gautam Buddha, Guru Nanak, Gandhi and Tagore, a land of sages and spirituality. We need to count our blessings and spread the message of this land to the world.
As Indians, it is our prime duty to ensure that every foreign visitor who steps on our soil, must return to his land in amazement; wondering how 1250 million people of such diversity and wide beliefs exist in this space as a single nation with a single commitment.
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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.