Women Empowerment: A must for India

India is growing at rapid pace; she has come out of the shell of a Hindu growth rate by registering an average growth rate of over 8 percent for last few years. She has recently joined the trillion dollar club economy. A recent World Bank study (the Report) in 2006 India with a Gross National Income (GNI) of 3.4 trillion is placed fourth after the US, China and Japan in terms of purchasing power parity exchange. The Report further suggests that India would be lacking more qualified work force by 2010, she needs more and more human resources in knowledge based industries as India is emerging as a hub of innovation ad Research and Development (R&D). It is estimation by World Bank that India would fall short of capable skills in these fields. How is it related to women empowerment? Women empowerment simply means women’s participation in decision making and development of her life. Women are a wonderful human resource that has been under-utilized for centuries. In India women have outshined men in every departments in which they had been provided opportunities.
The resurgent India needs to exploit this resource to spiral up her socio-economic development and this would contribute in India’s tryst with human resource deficit and poverty alleviation. A gap between rural and urban women is conspicuous, though urban women have used the opportunities given to them with a proven track record. Now it is the time when government should pay more attention to refine this natural source, tapped in rural India, to use as fuel for socio-economic development engine.
A success of Gramin Bank in Bangladesh has demonstrated that rural women given an opportunity produce more results than men. Under Gramin Bank schemes loans were made available, among others, to women without any warrant of collateral or guarantees because they hadn’t had any, the repayment was dot on time and Gramin Bank had very few non-performing assets. Women empowerment can also solve a problem that I reckon the most serious and need immediate response by government and us, Population Explosion. First let’s see in urban India, we could witness a decline in over all fertility rate, per census 2001, because of urban women as when they become an additional hand to fetch money in the house hold equipped with education and awareness, they have their say in family matters or even when at home-house-makers- they understand the consequences of a bearing a family bigger than the means of family, i.e. a compromise in best education, nutrition’s of baby etc.
When working they are not reduced to do chores, this also has potential to reduce domestic violence as they are less dependent on their husband or anyone else. Women empowerment would also reduce the menace of dowry, the brainless logic behind dowry that a lay man extends, is that since she comes to her in laws house and is being looked after by them she should come with gifts and endowment to compensate it. Although, in my opinion, it was a legal lacuna as in none of the school’s of Hindu personal law women had power to inherit, this was compensated through gifts etc by her parents to her in marriage when she dissociate her relationship from them.

This way she gets her pond of flesh without challenging the law which was discriminatory, thankfully, Government has done away with this legal lacuna by entitling women to inherit the family property under the Hindu Succession (Amendment) Act, 2005. In contrast women in rural sectors are still considered to be a property that needs to be protected within the four walls of house by men. In many cases they are not even aware of the society outside their veil or courtyard of their home.
They can not say anything to their husbands when it comes to procreation or other family matters. Unfortunately, if she delivers the baby girl, her ordeal aggravate until she bears a baby boy to satisfy the family of their paternity lineage to be carried forwarded to the next generation. Another kind of women in rural India is who work as tenants on agriculture farms and migrate to cities when there is period of crops change for work, they are severely uneducated. They bore kids as there is less they can perform to entertain, and also because more kids mean more hands to fetch money. They are earning hands but uneducated and unaware. So, empowerment means everything, education, ability to take up jobs, awareness, and exposure to world so that are not shy of a sexual assault on them rather can stand up against it. An awareness of contraceptives to avoid unwanted baby can bring down the fertility rate to even further and result would be substantial as India still lives in her villages, education to alleviate their socio-economic status, power to decide their fate in family matters or other places would constitute a true women empowerment. As Pt. Jawaharlal Nehru said if you educate a man you educate an individual, however, if you educate a woman you educate a whole family. Women empowered means mother India empowered.