??You can tell the condition of a nation by looking at the status of its women?, once remarked our first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru. The Census 2011 gauges that the literacy rate for women in India is 65.46 per cent, contrasting that against 80 per cent for men. Gender Inequality Index ranks India at 132 according to ?The Rise of the South: Human Progress in a Diverse World ?the 2013 United Nations Development Programme report.
The reasons of this wide difference in the stature between both the genders are widespread and known to all. Some common reasons range from the perpetual desire for a male heir in both the countryside and metro cities to the mindset considering women to be the fair sex and incompetent to handle the family responsibilities.
However, what is more important is to analyze the initiatives undertaken by Government to level these differences. The government of India had floated zealously its grand ideas for the country by declaring the year 2001 as Women’s Empowerment Year, with a focus on achieving the “vision in the new century of a nation where women are equal partners with men”. What followed was a spate of programmes and schemes with fine names: Swashakti and Stree Shakti for women’s empowerment; Swayam Siddha to benefit nearly a lakh women through micro-credit programmes, Balika Samrudhi Yojana for the girl child and a horde of various other projects, doubtlessly with intentions of going about a greater common good.
The Most recent trend of Government initiatives in the field of Women empowerment involves the ?Self Help Groups (SHG)? of rural and semi urban areas. Each SHG ideally consists of 10-20 members and aims to save funds for meeting their productive and emergent credit needs. Hence, these SHG not only develop several skills including entrepreneurial in women from different strata of the society but also make them increasingly self reliant, nurturing the enthusiasm and nerve to protests against various social evils such as dowry, marital rape, exploitation by employers etc. The booking keeping and other statistical data maintenance functions of SHG enable women to pursue basic academic skills, which, prevent them from being denied equal pay in comparison to their male colleagues, and inundate other professional institutions. Besides since most SHG focus on small-scale industries, literacy does not act as a hindrance for women who have been abstained from education.
However, India is a pluralistic nation, where barriers of race, religion and caste still actively gnaw the civil society. Therefore, the involvement of women belonging to religious minorities, lower castes abandoned or divorced women is doubtful owing to several prejudices prevailing in the countryside, often associated with religion. Corruption another socio-economic evil has crept in every tier of governance, with relatively lesser awareness in the rural areas; it gets easier to deny women of their dues. The status of SHG in a state depends on its own economic condition therefore; it is natural that the growth and developments of SHG in India are disproportionate and uneven. Since most of the SHG are constitutionally or informally tied up with the local Panchayats, not much of SHG are constituted for the economically weaker urban women, even if they are the system of administration is rather slow and inefficient.
The role of intermediaries, which have incessantly increased in the recent times especially in the rural areas, is another thing to be pondered about, as their share erodes up a large measure of profits generated. As it is often, the profit is very limited with returns on assets in most commercial banks being 1?2%.
SHG in India reach almost 33 million households and over thousands of SHG, members are elected for several local bodies in elections. However, the SHG movement is relatively nascent in India and it is the responsibility of not only the government but also the civil society in general, so that it does not perish away like the Chipko Movement or meet the same fate of implementation weaknesses as the Nehruvian strategies. It is therefore, the need of the hour to make our counterparts from the financially unstable or socially backward strata more aware of the amenities they deserve and train them to do away with intermediaries. The RIGHT to EDUCATION Act can serve as a very useful tool for teenage girls from weaker backgrounds in this pursuit. We the busy city dwellers can start by enrolling our domestic helps for Night schools or giving them a day off to pursue SHG activities.
Since women have started forming a very crucial vote bank and have got 33% reserved seats for themselves, it is likely that the political parties would make bringing down bank interest rates and facilitating other financial resources their agenda. Nevertheless, it is also the prerogative of us as citizens to ensure that these promises are kept through demonstration, protests, deputation and wise use of the electronic and social media.
A?postgraduate student of the Jadavpur University-Department of International Relations, Kolkata, West Bengal. Has interned with the Alexis Centre for Public Policy and International Relations on the project- media and (mis) representation of minority groups. Speaks German and French in addition to English, Hindi and Bengali. Won the Winter Spring Writing Competition organized by the Centre for International Relations, International Affairs Forum for authoring the essay ?China ? Getting Ahead or Losing Ground?? which was published in the summer 2012 issue of the same.
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