Half the Sky: women in India

The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) has brought out its latest Human Development Report for 2011. And it doesn’t spell good news for India. Although our overall rank in the Human Development Index (HDI) has remained the same — 134 out of 187 — what has really cast a curtain of gloom over our performance is the Gender Inequality Index, where India stands at the absolute bottom of the ladder in South Asia, faring better than just Afghanistan. With a rank of 129, India scores lower than neighbours Bangladesh, Nepal and Pakistan, with ranks of 112, 113 and 115 respectively, and is far behind Sri Lanka, which ranks 74. China, ranked 35, is too far ahead for us to even begin to compare with it. The index takes into account some important indicators such as female labour participation, maternal mortality and adolescent fertility, share of women in parliamentary seats and secondary and higher education attainment levels. Viewed from one perspective, female empowerment in India has been growing steadily, one of the indicators being female literacy, which, according to the latest census figures, has grown by 11.8 per cent in the last decade, and is 65.4 per cent now. Women today have a lot more independence than what their mothers had, when it comes to decision-making about themselves and their families. However, it seems our present best is just not good enough. At a time when India is increasingly moving into a leadership role in global affairs, it cannot afford to ignore one half of its population, which can play a substantial role in elevating the country’s social and economic position. It can, of course, be argued that the numbers are bound to be affected by the sheer size of the sample in India, not present in any of its neighbouring countries. The point, however, is that a country which dreams of being a global ‘superpower’, which harbours ambitions of moving in to fill the void being created by the sagging western giants, should not even be comparing itself with virtual ‘minnows’ having vastly lesser clout in the global arena. If India truly has to believe that it has ‘arrived’, its social indicators must be in line with the countries that it wants to compete with, not those that already consider it a ‘big brother’, if not a ‘big bully’. We cannot, on the one hand, talk about having the second highest growth rate in GDP while our social indicators languish somewhere at the bottom. To be the best, we must also compete with the best — not just economically but also socially. If India wants to soar high, it cannot afford to leave its women behind — it is they who hold up half the sky.