India must go for gender equality

 Dr. Devendra Kothari

Population and Development Analyst

Forum for Population Action

Gender equality is more than a goal in itself. It is a precondition for meeting the challenges of reducing poverty, promoting sustainable development and building good governance.

Kofi Annam

Former UN Secretary General

  

It is impossible to think about the welfare and sustainable development of India unless the condition of women is improved. “It is impossible for a bird to fly on only one wing”, noted Swami Vivekananda  some hundred years ago. Addressing about 6,000 women Sarpanchs (a Sarpanch is an elected head of a village-level statutory institution called the panchayat) from across the country on International Women’s Day 2017, Prime Minister Modi said, "If women, who are 50 per cent of the country's population, participate and are included in the nation - building process, our country can achieve great heights."

So, how is women's status in India? No doubt, in many ways, today is the best time in modern history of India to be a girl. Opportunities for a girl's successes are as unlimited as her dreams. Girls are defying all odds and showing Killer Instincts. PV Sindhu, Sakshi Malik and Dipa Karmakar became the unlikely heroines and saved the country's pride from returning empty-handed from the Rio Olympics (2016) for the first time since Barcelona 1992. In other words, today's India offers a lot of opportunities to women, with women having a voice in everyday life, the business world as well as in political life.

Yet an alarm is sounding, revealing a disturbing portrait of millions of girls missing and others struggling.[1]  Though India is moving away from the male dominated culture, discrimination is still highly visible in rural as well as in urban areas, throughout all strata of society. While women are guaranteed equality under the constitution, legal protection has a limited effect, where patriarchal traditions prevail.[2]

With the whole world celebrating International Women’s Day with great pomp and show, it would be only apt to refer three or four  incidences which took place in the first three months of this year to describe the position and space Indian women especially the young ones occupy today.

We live in the age where tweets, WhatsApp posts and Face Book status updates have taken over as news. Often, it is mindless celebrity gossip and random tripe, but occasionally it leads to something more troubling. Trolling of Dangal actor Zaira Wasim, martyr’s daughter Gurmehar Kaur and teenager singer sensation Nahid Afrin exposes our biased mind about women’s achievements.

The controversy surrounding Zaira Wasim – who was trolled on social media for her success in the film and meeting Jammu & Kashmir chief minister Mehbooba Mufti, who described her as a Kashmiri role model – has only exposed the bigotry and hypocrisy of the pro-separatist lobby in Kashmir and elsewhere. The cheap trolling suggests that believing Muslims are not willing to accept a boy-cut hair girl without burqa as their role model. She was subjected to sexist abuse. The pressure heaped on the 16-year-old forced her to tender an apology for her success. She went on to say, 'I am being projected as a role model for Kashmiri youth. I want to make it very clear that I do not want anyone to follow in my footsteps or even consider me as a role model...'

Similar kind of trolling happened to Gurmehar Kaur, the English literature student of Delhi University and daughter of an Army martyr, who had found herself at the centre of a social media storm over her stand supporting freedom of speech by saying that war had killed her father, not Pakistan, and for challenging ABVP (all India student organization affiliated to the RSS), withdrew from the campaign and opted out from the mega march against violence.[3] Kaur sought privacy, tweeting, ‘I've been through a lot and this is all my 20year self could take’. Sources said after having faced rape threats and vitriol on Twitter, Kaur left for her hometown, Jalandhar.

Lastly, just days after a Muslim girl from Karnataka was trolled and slammed for singing Hindu devotional songs, a pamphlet was issued against the 16-year-old singer Nahid Afrin from Assam, the winner of a TV talent show, by 46 clerics to stop her from performing in public.

Against the backdrop of such wholesale bigotry and misogyny, these young girls are indeed a role model for youth especially females across the country – and should be encouraged to express their views.

The targeting young girls (or women) reflect the height of emerging intolerance in the country. How can opinions be suppressed like this? Our Constitution gives all citizens freedom of speech and difference of opinion does not mean that attempts should be made to muzzle voices with uncivilized threats.

Recently, an Indian movie (Lipstick under my burkha), made by an Indian woman (Alankrita), about Indian women was blocked from Indian theaters by an Indian man (Pahlaj Nihalani, Chairman of the national censor board) even as it collected awards at international film festivals. In the movie four feisty women in a small-town of India try to chase their little dreams, desires and fantasies through secret acts of rebellion.  It appears that even the government statutory bodies like the Central Board of Film Certification are very interested in perpetuating the male gaze, and anything that is an alternative point of view makes them uncomfortable. I think everyone dreams what they do not get or want to have in reality, if makers of films trying to show facts about life of women/men why some people in the name of society and to prove their ego ban such efforts. 

It appears that female's abhivyakti (expression), khvaab (dream), or kalpana (fantasy) frightens us. And we want to regulate it by hook and crook. In recent years, we have seen a spate of honor killings in the country (the honor killing is defined as a death that is awarded to a woman of the family for marrying against the parent’s wishes, having extramarital and premarital relationships, marrying within the same gotra (clan) or outside one’s caste, etc. Honor killing is different from the dowry deaths that are also a very common practice in India), especially in the North India. According to the official data, between 2001 and 2015, love/marriage was the main recorded reason for such murders, suicides, abducting women and culpable homicide cases. On an average, there are seven murder cases, 14 suicides and 47 kidnapping cases (mostly because somebody eloped with kith and kin and others) every day. Terror, on the other hand, killed 3 to 4 people, including civilians and security forces, in the same period.

It appears women are not born, but made. What better than India to exemplify this statement by Simone de Beauvoir. [4]  Therefore the chains that tie women down are not only external but are welded together invisibly by dint of growing up in what is still a patriarchal society. In order for women to free themselves from these shackles they need to be made aware that they are there in the first place, and this is where de Beauvoir’s ideas are unfortunately still of relevance today. Even if society’s mores have moved on from those described by de Beauvoir around 70 years ago, the essential remains the same.

Most of us will agree with de Beauvoir that women should not allow themselves to be limited by other people’s ideas of what they are or how they should behave or what they should look like. But this needs an enabling or conducive environment.We have to recognize that we can control a woman’s body, lock her in the house, cover her face with a veil, but her mind cannot be truly domesticated.

"Today women are more eager to learn new things in their workplace. They have proved to be more sincere". And they know how to mobilize resources to complete an assigned task. Hence, we have to create conducive environment where women can chase big dreams and contribute country’s welfare and development. .

In my paper, Empowering Women in India: Need for a Feminist Agenda, it is argued that there is an urgent need to formulating a feminist agenda to empower women living in highly patriarchal and traditional surroundings with several obstacles. [5] The ‘agenda’ is based on the premises that no doubt efficient policing, stringent punishments and legal measures would reduce the incidences of crime against women but these cannot eliminate growing gender inequality in India unless and until the mindset of the society is changed. The article suggests that women-centred reproductive health care along-with enlarged education and employment opportunities for females may alter patriarchal constructs despite strong structural resistance. And this feminist agenda will contribute significantly towards women’s empowerment and reduce gender gap significantly.

Here the State and society have to swing to their side, like the Assam chief minister, the Union law minister and a chorus of other voices spoke for Nahid Afrin, defending her from the clerics. After getting support Afrin, who was seen in the famous reality TV show Indian Idol, said “she is not afraid of the threat and will continue to pursue her dream of making it big in the music industry.” 

From small villages to big cities, snug families to urban alienation, young women are going the extra mile to earn their living and carve out new careers. They need holistic skilling solutions and last-mile connectivity to chase their dreams. In her new  book, The End of Karma: Hope and Fury Among India’s Young, Somini Sengupta, a former New Delhi bureau chief for The New York Times, explores today’s India through portraits of seven young people who, despite many obstacles, aspire to mobility and opportunity. Hope India’s policy makers as well as public at large are listening.

---

[1] See my post: India confronts epidemic of missing girl children at -- http://kotharionindia.blogspot.in/2016/08/india-confronts-epidemic-of-missing.html

[2] Refer article Women Situation in India at: ttp://www.saarthakindia.org/womens_situation_india.html

[3] In the raging debate on the right to freedom of expression, LSR student Gurmehar Kaur, the daughter of Captain Mandeep Singh, who died in a Kashmir terror attack, was seen holding a placard that reads, "Pakistan did not kill my father, war did".

[4] The Second Sex, the classic manifesto of the librated women by Simone de Beauvoir, was first published in 1949. Never before had the case for female liberty or empowerment been so forcefully and successfully argued. De Beauvoir believed   that “one is not born, but rather becomes, a woman.”  Also refer article by Maureen Youngere:  “One is not born a woman, but becomes one” at http://standardissuemagazine.com/voices/one-born-woman-becomes-one/

[5] Kothari, Devendra. 2014. “Empowering women in India: Need for a Feminist Agenda”, Journal of Health Management, 16 (2), pp 233-43. Also refer  my post: India confronts epidemic of missing girl children at -- http://kotharionindia.blogspot.in/2016/08/india-confronts-epidemic-of-missing.html

India: Human development and nutrition

Dr. Devendra Kothari

Population and Development Analyst

Forum for Population Action

India must convert its young population to a competitive advantage, and nutrition is one of the most important stimulants to that outcome.

Nutrition plays a critical role in human resource development since deficiencies in essential nutrients lead to malnutrition, which affects an individual's mental and physical state, resulting in poor health and poor work performance. In addition, a hungry, malnourished child may have mild to serious learning disabilities, resulting in poor school performance; a sick, poorly nourished individual will not respond well to treatment, could lose many working hours and may continue to drain family and national resources. Thus, malnutrition may undermine investments in education, health and other development sectors.

The Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, Government of India has released the results from the first phase of the National Family Health Survey-4 (NFHS-4), conducted in 2015-16. The results indicate that fewer children are dying in infancy and early childhood. After the last round of National Family Health Survey in 2005-06, infant mortality has declined for which trend data are available. All States/Union Territories have rates below 51 deaths per 1,000 live births, although there are considerable variations. [1]

However, NFHS-4 reveals that India’s high economic growth rate in the past decade has not been fully reflected in the health status of its people with 20 per cent of its population undernourished. More than half of the children and women are still anaemic.

The “Global Nutrition Report 2016” collaborates the findings of the NFHS-4. It once again demonstrates India’s slow overall progress in addressing chronic malnutrition, manifest in stunting (low weight for age), wasting (low weight for height), micronutrient deficiencies and over-weight. “Our track record in reducing the proportion of undernourished children over the past decade has been modest at best, and lags what other countries with comparable socio-economic indicators have achieved”, as noted by  Vinita Bali, Director, Alliance for  Improved Nutrition.[2]

According to the Report, in a ranking of countries from lowest to highest on stunting, India ranks 114 out of 132 countries, with the incidence of stunting at 38.7 per cent, compared with Germany and Chile at 1.3 per cent and 1.8 per cent, respectively. Even Bangladesh and Nepal rank marginally higher than India. On wasting, India ranks 120 out of 130 countries, at 15.1 per cent, compared with Australia and Chile at number 1 and 2, with 0 per cent and 0.3 per cent, and South Sudan at 130 with 22.7 per cent. On the prevalence of anaemia in women of reproductive age, India ranks 170 out of 185 countries at 48.1 per cent, compared with Senegal which is the worst at 57.5 per cent and the U.S. which is the best at 11.9 per cent.

The segments most at risk continue to be adolescent girls, women and children, and among them Scheduled Castes and Tribes are the worst off, reflecting the insidious economic and socio cultural deprivation so prevalent in India. The most important national effort is yet to address these deficiencies in India.Despite being one of the biggest producers of food supplies, India is home to 25 percent of the world’s hungry poor, according to a U.N. agency.

The International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) [3] makes the annual calculations of Global Hunger Index (GHI). Basing its readings on the most recent data, the 2016 GHI for India was derived from the fact that an estimated 15 per cent population is undernourished - lacking in adequate food intake, both in quantity and quality. the report states that “Countries worse than India include extremely poor African countries such as Niger, Chad, Ethiopia and Sierra Leone besides two of India's neighbors: Afghanistan and Pakistan. Other neighbors Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Nepal and China are all ranked above India”.[4]

According to the Report that the malnutrition is a complex problem that contributes to 45 per cent of deaths among children under the age of five in India annuall. Chronically malnourished children are, on average, nearly 30 percent less literate than those who have a nutritious diet. The share of under-5 children who are `wasted' is about 15% while the share of children who are `stunted' is a staggering 39 percent. This reflects widespread and chronic lack of balanced food. This is partially reflecting the fatal synergy of inadequate nutrition and unhealthy environments.

Although India runs two of the world's biggest children's nutrition programmes, the ICDS for children under 6 years  (launched  in 1975) and the mid-day meal programme (1995) for school going kids up to the age of 14, malnutrition    continues to haunt India.

No doubt, nutrition is a big issue. Many health problems could be resolved by proper nutrition. For example, a tuberculosis control strategy that is merely treatment-based would be ineffective unless under-nutrition, which compromises immunity and leads to the latent TB infection turning active in millions, is addressed. Prof Anurag Bhargava, who has been working for decades on TB, pointed out that in India where 40 per cent of the population or about 500 million is estimated to have latent TB infection, it would be logistically impossible to treat them with drugs for 6-9 months. It is always malnutrition and vitamin deficiency that leads a person to TB. A body must have adequate vitamins, minerals and other natural substances in the food it takes to avoid TB. In other words, TB is a nutritional disease, argues Prof Bhargava, that can be prevented by placing nutrition (including adult nutrition) at the heart of the global developmental and public health agenda and implementing appropriate economic and agricultural policies, social protection measures and targeted nutritional interventions". [5]

One of the reasons for persistent under nutrition in India, despite the creation of the Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS) in 1975 and national coverage of the Mid-Day Meal Scheme in 1995, is that there is no structure for multi-sectoral coordination which is essential to address the inter-generational and multifaceted nature of malnutrition. Both schemes should be revamped looking to the needs of beneficiaries.[6]

Of these, the intent to revamp the ICDS has already been announced by the Government and must move into action mode quickly. This must include streamlining the work in the 1.34 million anganwadi centres by investing in training the 2.5 million workers and helpers at these centres, standardizing the nutrition component of the supplementary food offered and focusing on the overall dissemination of information and education to pregnant and nursing mothers on healthy eating habits, hygiene and sanitation,

Similarly, the mid-day meal is an excellent structure to reach 120 million children with continuity and regularity. A single intervention in that scheme to focus on nutrition in addition to food will make a critical difference. This can easily be accomplished by the addition of micronutrients to cooked food or by adding universally liked and accepted products such as milk, biscuits, etc. fortified with micronutrients as a mid-morning or afternoon snack. Therefore, extend large-scale food fortification beyond salt to other staples like flour, oil, dairy, etc. and establish mandatory standards by category.

In addition, endemic poverty coupled with growing number of unwanted childbearing,[7] unemployment, lack of sanitation and safe drinking water, and lack of effective healthcare are main factors for the sorry state.

The human dividend or demographic dividend on which we are banking is actually a huge liability given that one out of every three children is born underweight and unable to realize the full potential for physical growth and cognitive development, leading to lower levels of productivity. The World Bank estimates that India loses 2-3 per cent of its annual GDP by way of lower productivity, the underlying cause of which is malnutrition.

In sum, the need to systemically address underlying causes of malnutrition in India is an urgency that cannot be postponed. Poor nutrition will fracture the dreams and aspirations of India to become a global player in manufacturing and other sectors. Hope policy makers are listening!

---

[1] Refer: National Family Health Survey 2015-16 (NFHS-4): states fact sheets, International Institute of Population Studies, Mumbai, 2016.

[2] Refer article by Vinita Bali: We need a Nutrition Mission at: http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/lead/We-need-a-Nutrition-Mission/article14503108.ece

[3] The International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) makes the annual calculations of GHI.

[4] For details, refer article at:, http://www.ifpri.org/news-release/india-ranked-97th-118-global-hunger-index-times-india. Also see: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/India-ranked-97th-of-118-in-global-hunger-index/articleshow/54822103.cms 

[5] Refer article: To control TB, under nutrition must be tackled’ by Rema Nagarajan (2016) at: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/To-control-TB-undernutrition-must-be-tackled/articleshow/55216307.cms

[6] For further  details, see article by Vinita Bali: We need a Nutrition Mission at: http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/lead/We-need-a-Nutrition-Mission/article14503108.ece

[7] Kothari, Devendra. 2014. “Managing Unwanted Fertility in India: Way Forward”, Institute of Economic Growth (ed.):   National Rural Health Mission: An Unfinished Agenda, New Delhi: Book Well, pp.25-36. Also refer, author’s post entitled - India: Why population matters? at http://kotharionindia.blogspot.in/2015/04/india-why-population-matters.html

Why American elected Trump as President of USA?

Dr. Devendra Kothari

Population and Development Analyst

Forum for Population Action

“Donald Trump is not the only villain in the world. All of us are equally guilty”

 

Donald J. Trump did what millions thought impossible: he is 45^th President of United States of America. Here is why?

It was an astounding feat for Trump to get elected. He has never held public office. He is widely known for a unique form of unpleasant character and corrupt capitalism. On top of this, he was hugely unpopular, even more so, according to most polls, than his opponent. True, if the U.S. were like the rest of the world, the person who got the most votes—Hillary Clinton, with in this case around 3 million more—would be the next president. Thus, Trump starts his term having very little legitimacy in the eyes of millions. But this does not matter.

Eager to demonstrate his readiness to take actions, Trump went directly to the Oval Office just after taking oath and before the inaugural balls, and signed his first executive order as President   to "minimizing the economic burden" of President Obama’s Affordable Care Act. Trump said that “This is a movement and now the work begins," before dancing with his wife, Melania, to "My Way" at the first of three inaugural balls. It appears that he is going to have his “way” during his tenure.

So how the hell did this happen? The Trump victory, as unlikely and confounding as it was, set off an enormous amount of head-scratching, along with an unprecedented avalanche of opinions and theories about how this came to be. This post analyzes why Donald  Trump won?

Recently, a post appeared at AlterNet, the authors suggested a number of “theories” of this election. [1]  Before we dig deeper, we need to stipulate at the onset that there can be no one single theory explaining why voters favored him. And I have my own explanation.

I arrived in the San Francisco Area just one month before Donald Trump was nominated as the Republican Party candidate for the presidency at the Republican National Convention held in Cleveland, Ohio on July 18–21, 2016. But he was widely branded as a unique form of obnoxious character by media - both print and television. One of the most trusted popular newspapers – New York Times – openly opposed and criticized his candidature. Many experts and even big ones in the Republican Party issued statements after statements against Trump’s capabilities to run the country.

I was totally confused and shocked why people especially media were cursing him? If he was such an obnoxious character why the ordinary members of Republican Party, in first place, elected him as its candidate in primaries with a wide margin? My friends and even my own relatives in USA were against Donald Trump candidature.  And that motivated me to verify the facts. 

Americans are more divided nation along political lines. During my stay in USA during summer 2016, I talked to people of both sexes and found majority of my sample, though it was very-very small, favored change and they thought that Donald Trump like Narendra Modi in India in 2014 could be an agent of change. The majority of American both republican as well as a small number of democrats thought Donald Trump could be an Agent of Change. Hillary Clinton was very familiar but she was seen an extension of President Barak Obama.  Further, Clinton was tarnished by perceived corruption for accepting money from Wall Street for her speeches. In addition, Hillary’s email controversy further damaged her candidature.  Clinton also lacked a strong central message. Her general election campaign focused almost exclusively on Trump’s unfitness for office. It was a negative strategy.  

Also, Hillary Clinton’s candidacy had provoked a wave of misogyny. According to the Public Religion Research Institute, 52 percent of white men held a “very unfavorable” view of Clinton. It is ironic that in a country where women rights are far more progressive than many other countries, the United States was not yet ready for a woman president. Regardless of Trump’s derogatory remarks against women, a sizable number of women all over America voted for Trump in enough numbers to see him to victory (Refer: https://qz.com/832024/2016-presidential-election-results-hillary-clintons-loss-is-a-sign-that-america-was-never-ready-for-a-woman-president/) .

On the other hand, Trump was able to create an impression among people that a prosperous future was in store for the United States under his presidency.

Also, during my stay in the Bay Area, I spent a good amount of time at the book store Barnes & Noble and San Carlos Public Library. One book - The Price of Prosperity: Why Rich Nations Fail and How to Renew Them (2016) - impressed me a lot. And it helped me to my quest.

In this book, a former White House director of economic policy, Todd G. Buchholz,  exposes the economic, political, and cultural cracks that wealthy nations face and makes the case for transforming those same vulnerabilities into sources of strength—and the foundation of a national renewal.

Buchholz raises the question: Is the loss of empire inevitable? No. Can a community spirit be restored in the U.S.? According to him, the answer is a resounding yes. “We cannot retrieve the jobs of our grandparents, but we can embrace uniquely American traditions, while building new foundations for growth and change.” He offers a roadmap to recovery for USA and calls for a “revival of national pride and patriotism to help us come together once again to protect the nation and ensure our future”.

A sizable number of Americans, for a host of reasons, is feeling fundamental loss. Economic despair, lost jobs, fantasy-based economic policy, unwarranted involvement in Iran and Iraq and racism were too potent a cocktail for voters and that drove Donald Trump to victory. Voters took a risk, and that risk means white supremacists in the White House. It is widely felt that The US will be a minority-majority country by the middle of the century (that is whites will be less than 50% of the population), and  so a Trump is needed. 

At the same time, an average American could not understand why media including newspapers like The New York Times were apposing him totally. In the big picture, while the press wasn’t the only entity responsible for Trump’s win, it played a major role in making it happen.

And Donald Trump was smart enough to coin the slogans “Make America Great Again” and “America First”.  And that convinced the Americans that Donald Trump is a person who could solve their problems and ensure their future.

In Donald Trump win, one has to recognize that we live in a world where a political culture has become almost disconnected from truth that is “Post-Truth” politics. The term “Post-truth” is being defined as "a political culture in which politics (public opinion and media narratives) have become almost entirely disconnected from policy or truth. 

In other words, the Post-truth politics (also called post-factual politics) is a political culture in which debate is framed largely by appeals to emotion disconnected from the details of policy, and by the repeated assertion of talking points to which factual rebuttals are ignored. (In 2016, the term "post-truth" was chosen as the Oxford Dictionary’s Word of the Year due to its prevalence in the context of that year's Brexit and Donald Trump election.)

For much of the election season, candidate Trump was allowed to say whatever erroneous thing he wanted without correction, while the flagging media used the Trump show to drive ad dollars to levels the industry had not seen in years. Initially, Trump bathed in this spotlight, as per the Fox News.

The biggest explanation is that voters wanted to have drastic change, though many of the things Trump said were contradictory and often untrue, but that did not seem to matter to 60 million or so voters. But, why were they willing to bet the ranch on a candidate with some of the most blatant flaws and inappropriate behavior of any presidential candidate in our lifetime needs more research based explanations.

In sum, if our political leadership does not recognize the Post-truth politics we may have many Trumps in future. In this context we should not forget the rise of Hitler in thirties. Moral of the story:  the politicians must pay close attention to or give heed to the feeling of the ordinary people and mold accordingly.

Post scriptum:

Whether we like him or not, India and the rest of the world will eventually deal with President Trump, reservations and personal distaste about his policies and idiosyncrasies notwithstanding.

We have to recognize that Trump’s first interest is to protect America’s interest. And that is right. Nevertheless, India must prepare for a situation where there is a clampdown on US visas for Indian businesses, professionals and passport holders. And the government must spot opportunity in adversity, it should take advantage of any American ban to speed up the reform process and lure American companies to ‘Make in India’.  For this, we have to unlock the human potential as well as create favorable conditions of doing business (according to World Bank’s latest ease of doing business country rankings, India comes in 130th among 189 countries).

---

[1] This post is greatly influenced by an article - Why Donald Trump won — and how Hillary Clinton lost: 13 theories explain the stunning election by  DON HAZEN, KALI HOLLOWAY, JENNY PIERSON, JAN FREL, LES LEOPOLD, STEVEN ROSENFELD, MICHAEL ARRIA, ILANA NOVICK AND JANET ALLON, ALTERNET. It was originally appeared on AlterNet.  For detail, refer at: http://www.salon.com/2016/12/26/13-theories-on-why-trump-won-and-how-clinton-lost_partner/