M Govinda Rao: The better half is not shining!

The gender bias of India is not a characteristic of the poor states alone

In his address to the National Development Council in July, the Prime Minister stated, "Rare are moments of history when a nation suddenly captures the imagination of the world".

Indeed, India is the latest poster child for its efforts to showcase the burgeoning middle class, free its markets, and open its borders for trade and investment.

It is heralded as a success story of globalisation for its acceleration in growth and high technology exports. Yet, the record of human development and, particularly, gender equity has been dismal. India certainly does not shine for the millions of "missing girls" and under-privileged women.

The poor record of gender equity has been brought out in the two important reports released last month, the Human Development Report (HDR) of the UNDP and the World Development Report (WDR) of the World Bank.

The theme of the former is international co-operation for inclusive development in an unequal world; the latter focuses on equity and development. Both deal with the causes and consequences of international and intra-national inequities.

According to the HDR, "...Gender inequalities are among the deepest and most pervasive of inequalities" and rightly, there is considerable focus on the issue.

India's human development performance is pathetic. It ranks 127 among 177 countries, with Sao Tome Principe above and Solomon Islands below. Gender inequity is a major contributor to the poor record of human development. The gender development index (GDI) ranking in 2003 equals HDI rankings. Indeed India's position in GDI rankings is just above that of Cambodia. Do we care?

The misery for females in India starts even before their birth. The sin of possessing 2X chromosomes denies lakhs of children their very existence! The death rate in the age group 1-5 years is 50 per cent higher for girls than for boys.

The under-five mortality rate is more than twice as high for children of illiterate mothers than for children whose mothers have completed middle school education.

Educated mothers are less prone to under nutrition, more likely to access basic health services, have fewer children at an older age, and are more likely to space the birth of their children. All these contribute to survival of children.

The four "BIMARU" (Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, and Uttar Pradesh) states account for more than half of the deaths of children and these are the states with deepest gender inequities. Girls born in Kerala are five times more likely to reach the fifth birthday, twice as likely to become literate and likely to live 20 years longer than those in Uttar Pradesh.

In the much-studied and -publicised village of Palanpur in Uttar Pradesh, the sex ratio is 84 females per 100 males and the proportion of females in the labour force is abysmal. Indeed, these are true of all states where there is chronic under-provision of education and healthcare.

Reasons for this have to be found both in the "legacy of decades of underinvestment in human development" and "unaccountable state level governance structures".

Tragically, the gender bias is not a characteristic of the poor states alone. The WDR points to the shameful statistics in two affluent states, Punjab and Haryana. While the sex ratio of juveniles (newborn to 4 years) in India is 1.08, it is 1.24 in the two states.

The alarming rate of aborting female foetuses to choose male progeny has created a shameful record of lakhs of missing girls in these states every year. The economic prosperity from agricultural growth has not made any dent in the status of women.

Indeed, woman's education and skill development are the key to family welfare. It helps to improve health, demographic transition, access to paid work, empowerment and, in short, inclusive development. Despite government interventions so far, 52 per cent of adult females are illiterate.

Thus, a majority of the women are simply excluded from white-collar work. Not surprisingly the average income per female is Rs 1,569, which is almost a third of what an average male receives (Rs 4,130). The lack of opportunity and access to productive, paid jobs to women is indicated by the fact that the gross tertiary enrolment ratio among females is just 10 per cent. Almost 90 per cent of women above 16 years either do not have opportunities to participate in paid work, or even if they do, their participation is in poorly-paid, unskilled jobs.

Thus, a large proportion of the potential work force is simply not included in development by conventional measures. Of course, the tertiary enrolment rate among the males at 14.8 is not much higher and this shows the failure of the education system to engage the youth in education and skill development through formal and vocational education.

The country can ill afford to exclude such large proportions of people from formal economic activity. In part, the poor record of gender equity is the result of the development strategy. The heavy industries, public sector dominated strategy did not permit women to take opportunities in capital-intensive industries.

Despite this, the country has examples of people-based development where women were included. On the western coast from Goa to Mangalore, for example, the spread of floriculture and non-farm avocations, including the domestic production of beedies, did economically empower rural women.

Similarly, the success story of milk co-operatives in empowering rural women in Gujarat has been well recorded. The deliberate policy of the banking industry in coastal Karnataka to hire women in the 1970s (mainly to attract customers and prevent unionisation) created a virtuous cycle of creating a galaxy of strong female bank officials and improved female education. This, through the demonstration effect, contributed to female literacy, increase in marriage age and demographic transition.

There are important lessons from these examples if only we care to learn them. Indeed, training the skilled workforce to meet the surge in textiles demand in the post-quota regime should have been our priority.

But in our system, the bureaucrats managing vocational education are yet to understand this. Even now, it is not too late to train women in the skills, along with removing oppressive regulations that protect only the organised labour to increase textile exports.

The author is Director, National Institute of Public Finance and Policy. Comments at mgr@nipfp.org.in