The latest report on gender gap released by World Economic Forum this week is an eye-opener on the existing situations in various countries. India takes a hit, yet again, with the report putting it at slot 112 among nations in terms of existing gender gap. Notably, the scenario in India is worsening in recent years. The worst impact of this is on the health and survival front, where the scene remains pretty bad overall, despite some noticeable leads in urban areas.
Notably, in year 2006 when the first WEF report was released, India’s position was at 96th slot. Over the years, the scenario is steadily worsening in terms of women emancipation and empowerment. Last year, India stood at 108th place, from where the present fall has come about. India’s poor showing is not just limited to gender gap or women emancipation; the nation retains a pitiable record on various human development indices, based on United Nations surveys and report released every year. Most of the African countries fare better than India when it comes to ensuring basic amenities for the poor multitudes.
This, however, does not prevent governments here who rule the nation for durations of five years, from making big claims about India’s growth. GDP growth by itself is no indicator of the overall growth of a society. It touches at best on the economic aspects. While blaming governments for failure to make major differences to living conditions, the problem is there for all to see; namely, the population bulge which is currently at 1.30billion plus. China too is faced with the same problem, a reason why despite its fast-paced economic growth, the nation is ailing on many critical fronts.
As per the WEF report, the gender gap in political fields worldwide has narrowed down, but the gap in economic empowerment between men and women has worsened. It notes that the economic opportunity gap has widened from 202 last year to 257 this year. India has improved its record on women political empowerment to the 18th place. However, India slipped to 150th position when it came to basic living requirements of health and survival for women, 149th in terms of economic opportunities and to 112th place in the matter of education. Also, only one quarter of women engage themselves in manual labour, against 82 per cent men. In this respect, India was put at the 145th slot globally; a sad citation. It is also noted that the income of women in India is just one-fifth of what their male counterparts earn. India needs do better.