IndiaStand

Our first Prime Minister Pt. Jawaharlal Nehru, once said, “You can tell the state of a nation by looking at the status of the women there”. Indeed, if you analyze the status of the women in India, we come to see a daunting and pathetic situation. Few statistical data which augment this notion viz the Sex Ratio of India is 933 females per 1000 males. Female literacy rate in India is at present 54.16 %. Representation of women in parliament or legislative assemblies has never been more than 15 %. Female administrators, managers, professionals combined together account for a miniscule 2.3 %. On the other hand, female technicians account for 20 % of the total share. India presently accounts for nearly 25 % of world’s total maternal deaths. Dietary intake of women in lower economic group is deficit by 500 to 600 calories per day. Due to this, in the age group of 1-5 years, almost half, and to be precise 49.1 % of the girls are underweight. According to a latest survey, majority of Indian women are anemic. Domestic violence against women is increasing everyday. Women in India suffer from chronic mental depression and neurosis. Indeed, life of a woman is very tough, torturous and daunting. Women are raped, kicked, killed, subdued and humiliated every day in India. To add to agony, in India a woman is raped after every 54 minutes, such is the intensity of atrocities committed against women in India. Even before their birth , women folk have to bear the brunt of female foeticide, and after their birth, their fight against numerous social evils such as female infanticide, child marriage, early age pregnancy, dowry, sexual harassment, rejection and obstracization at old age by kith and kin. In a nutshell, despite various schemes launched by government and increase in status of few women, there seems no sign of women empowerment as a whole.

STILL MILES TO GO !!

The irony is that today, everybody talks about women empowerment but the crude realty is that nobody is willing to take initiative for that as our society is a male-dominant society as males have framed all rules of our Indian society according to their own convenience, so they are in no way ready to sacrifice their special privileges as per the contemporary scenario is concerned. According to Indian philosophy, women in every stage of life need to be protected by someone and she owes her obligation towards her father in childhood, brother in adolescent age, husband in youth and son in old age. The notion behind this is good, but it is alarming that in implementation of the same notion, the persons who are supposed to take care of women, actually exploit them in one way or the other. The case of domestic violence, denial of good quality food, clothes and education to girl child is direct consequence of the above mentioned ill-practice of our society. In short, women are the victims of a whole plethora of violence committed against them such as torture, rape, molestation, battering, trafficking, forced prostitution, forced marriage, dowry death, and custodial violence and so on…

Even though many initiatives have been taken by government such as Integrated Child Development Scheme, Integrated Women Empowerment Programme, and statutes such as Indecent Representation of Women’s Act, Minimum Wages Act, Equal Remuneration Act, Pre-Natal Diagnostic Act, Maternal Benefit Act et al, but proved futile due to lack of implementation skills, lack of monetary support etc. A classic example in this regard is that of Women Reservation Bill for 33% reservation for women in Parliament and other Legislative Assemblies, which despite a lot of hue and cry and cacophony has not been introduced in Lok Sabha till today. Moreover, its passage in Rajya Sabha was also not so smooth as it was contemplated earlier. Furthermore, if we turn the pages of history we will find that even 73^rd and 74^th Constitutional Amendment to the Indian Constitution in 1993, provides for reservation of women in local bodies such as Panchayats and Municipalities, but it reality it has not worked as an effective tool because in reality it is not the elected women who takes decision on her own, but it is their husband or brother or father who still remain the real decision maker. As a result of this, even if a women is elected to a local body, she still remains a puppet of her husband and works at her mercy. Even more astonishing is that, even though in Hindu Succession Act, 1956, there is provision for inheritance of ancestral property for women, but in reality ancestral property is most of the time inherited by male child only…keeping women still at the mercy of males and far away form the state of empowerment.

It is true that few women such as Chanda Kochar, Meira Kumar, Kiran Bedi, Pratibha Devi Singh Patil, have reached echelons of success in their life, but we must understand that success  is their individual  life due to their high standard of merit and hard work. These examples constitute a miniscule percentage of total population of women in India. If women were empowered, then why a highly talented IPS Officer Kiran Bedi was not made Commissioner of Delhi Police, despite unmatched career records? We can say empowerment of women only if there is rise in stature of women in India at a mass scale, not only few examples as mentioned above.

At last I conclude that Women Empowerment is totally a MYTH as their empowerment require making women educationally and financially independent which has not been achieved till today as women are marginalized in socially, economic and political participation, denied access to education and quality nutrition etc. Due to all this very figure very low in Gender Equality Index and Gender Development Index-which is an unequivocal proof of empower less state of women in our country.