Foremost is the requirement of a legislation for Women’s Equitable Political Representation in Parliament/State Legislatures.
New Delhi: As I look back across near seven decades of intense involvement with women’s issues, I ask myself what is important to underline today so that India succeeds to unlock the fuller potential of one half of her humanity, without which Amrit Kaal cannot be. Today’s stree shakti drumbeat reminds me of our long ago gathering in Mexico City—International Women’s Year (IWY) 1975, that first United Nations’ Conference on Women when the very air vibrated with hope that the 20th century would be the Women’s Century. But half a century later, notwithstanding fairly remarkable strides for women everywhere (severe setbacks in some), the shortfall on all three of IWY’s trifold agenda: Equality, Peace and Development is self evident. Also, the consequences of that failure.
Our present times display dominant macho industrial global mentality counter to transformative “women’s (peace and development) perspectives”. Yet, India, now at the high table, has opportunity to hallmark her global presence with exemplary women-led, clean green harmonious development alternatives and inclusive peace initiatives.
Indian women’s condition has improved dramatically since that pathetic legacy bequeathed by colonization. Most particularly after 1975 when the complacency engendered by our remarkably egalitarian Constitution was rudely shattered by the reality unearthed by the Report of the Committee on the Status of Women in India (CSWIR 1975). Instituted with the fond hope that the then woman Prime Minister would showcase a fabulous success story at Mexico City, ironically, CWSIR comprehensively documented a grim scenario: its most startling statistic, India’s declining sex ratio which singly encapsulated the wide ranging secondary, subservient and neglected nature of most women’s lives.
Post 1980s’ policy focus on identified gender needs resulted in considerable improvements on many fronts: principally, female education, reproductive health and fertility drop, fundamental building blocks for women’s wellbeing and equal participation in the nation’s economic and social life. Tragically, it did not happen fast enough, nor uniformly across the board. So, the dramatic societal change that historically follows such basic development is yet to surge.
India’s recent arrival at Total Fertility Rate (TFR) of 2.1, i.e., when a woman completing her reproductive span is replaced solely by another, eventually resulting in population stabilization is a most significant advance. Till the 1980s, child bearing consumed an Indian woman’s life from puberty to menopause. It was the leading cause of high mortality/morbidity rates, not only amongst women but also the children born low birth weight to exhausted, debilitated mothers, then under nourished, under cared in large poor family units; the female nearly always the lesser than the male in all sections. A mal cycle of high female and child mortality/morbidity thus perpetuated.
Maternal mortality caused a mind boggling 573 deaths per 100,000 births in the 1980s. Now it is 97/100,000 live births, 33 points shaved in the last decade alone. But yet far from minimal risk, for developed countries boast low single digit figures. Infant Mortality Rate (IMR), which was then an unconscionable 120 per 1,000 live births, is down to 27.6 in 2022; the decline significantly accelerated in the last few years alone. Improved under-five child survival rates signify beyond health better socio-economic progress. But the quarter century delay in arriving at TFR 2.1 (Earlier Planning Commissions phrased it differently but the aim was Net Reproductive Rate of 1 by 2,000) has taken its toll; insufficient policy attention to the “nuptiality factor” is a major cause of the sad lag.
Age at marriage is a most critical social indicator. A woman’s lack of control over her own reproductive life is perhaps the most crippling setback to her personal autonomy and ability to develop her full potential. Deprivation of equal access to education and health support because of the patriarchal mindset of “paraya dhan” traditionally cast the girl into the suffocating trajectory of early marriage, early and repetitive motherhood, limiting her other possibilities. Today while achievement of replacement level fertility adds a feather to India’s cap, the dismal fact of more than a quarter of 15-19-year-old girls still married before the legal age of 18 years (also 15% of men before the legal age of 21 with marginal rates also for younger girls/boys) is a huge societal blot, negating female progress and not insignificant contributor to the still high maternal, child and infant mortality/morbidity, besides the huge “dowry syndrome”.
Increasing age at marriage is therefore a crucial social challenge. But caution: not with Western style premarital sexual freedom for the young that only multiplies social problems, but with the restraint and sobriety of the East/South East Asian experience in substantively increasing age at marriage.
Almost half of India’s population is now under 25, two thirds under 35. A huge youth bulge makes the “nuptiality factor” more critical than ever. The intrinsic value delayed marriage adds by enabling individual personal development has the additional advantage of slowing population growth momentum inbuilt in this demographic. Longer generational gaps due to later marriage is far more consequential demographically than any family planning effort. While segments of the most backward, deprived areas and communities still outside the dramatically reduced TFR require focused contraceptive attention, the young need emphasis on other life skills.
Women’s empowerment, an intrinsic national goal, has the additional power of magical impact on demographic management and socio economic transformation.
The past offers important lessons: empowerment and change do not happen on any scale with silo interventions and piecemeal action; nor with coercion. It needs holistic vision that recognizes the criticality of inter sectoral synergy and evolves well-coordinated policies that cut across sectors. Compassion and concern for the individual must be the paramount consideration.
THE WAY FORWARD
How then should we move? For positive, cross cutting sectoral policy development and implementation there are two crucial prerequisites: (1) At the top political echelons women elected to Parliament and State Legislatures in equitable number to form a critical political mass that vertically networks Parliament to Panchayat/Municipal and can forefront “women’s voice and women’s perspectives”, frame synergistic sectoral cross cutting laws and policies and monitor their implementation. (2) At the community level, systematic convergence of frontline women workers within defined smaller geographical areas of not more than 5,000 population. Anganwadi/Asha/ANM/primary schoolteacher/self-help group coordinator etc., need to function as “teams” simultaneously reaching the spectrum of entitlements to maximize delivery impact. Block/district/constituency wise reviews to monitor/fine-tune desired outcomes within stipulated timeframes must be essential to this systematic local grid.
A major issue affecting girls’/women’s participation in almost any sphere is that of their physical security and body integrity. The issue goes much beyond toilet building. Fear keeps girls out of school, women away from work and if abused within the household, without any recourse. Media/civil society outrage each time a rape/molestation is reported highlights gross inadequacies of police, prosecution, justice, relief and rehabilitation work, but is poor substitute for widescale corrective action with urgency. Neglected but even more important is the need to laser focus on prevention and promotion of a protective environment: safe for girls/women to live and venture out without fear.
Here, although the new technologies carry to the doorstep marvelous opportunities with new knowledge, modern impulses, there is also their menacing dark underside. Political/communal hate speech has caused justified outcry but not so the unthinkable lewdness and pornography that is a sinister dehumanizing influence on male sexuality.
A rigorously implemented ban on all pornography, not just child pornography, is required in toto inside your own home and outside. Pornography itself constitutes the worst form of hate speech and hate action. It incites sexual violence/abuse. In India, the Constitution’s Article 19(2) must prevail over USA’s First Amendment, notwithstanding the hue and cry about democracy/free speech. Massive communication campaigns need to be mounted to reorient male perspectives on masculinity, gender sensitize and awaken the “feminine attributes” of empathy, mutuality, cooperation and collaboration as vital human endowments and the new political tools for all to usher egalitarian social change.
India’s new Parliament building will be shortly inaugurated. A special session on women must be its priority. It must initiate strategic political measures and policy directions crucial to gender sensitive structural change instantly. Foremost is the requirement of a legislation for Women’s Equitable Political Representation in Parliament/State Legislatures. This newspaper has earlier extensively documented an effective strategy through the Dual Member Constituency route.
Courageous political action, not merely celebratory of Stree Shakti but which proactively mainstreams women as full partners and awakens the feminine within every human is urgently required for Amrit Kaal to be realized.
We cannot say Tomorrow, her name is Today. (Apologies to Gabriele Mistral.)
Rami Chhabra is a media veteran, who pioneered the first feminist columns in the national press. She has served the country in various capacities, including in GoI and as Member, National Population Commission.