The
Pink-color Economic Survey 2017-18 tabled in Parliament today by the Union
Minister for Finance and Corporate Affairs, Shri Arun
Jaitley lays special emphasis on Gender and Son
meta-preference, while providing an assessment of India’s performance on gender
outcomes relative to other economies.
The
Survey takes into account that Gender equality is an inherently
multi-dimensional issue. Accordingly, assessments have been made based on three
specific dimensions of gender, ie Agency (relates to
women’s ability to make decisions on reproduction, spending on themselves,
spending on their households and their own mobility and health), Attitudes
(relate to attitudes about violence against women/wives, and the ideal number
of daughters preferred relative to the ideal number of sons) and Outcomes
(relate to ‘son preference’ measured by sex ratio of last child, female
employment, choice of contraception, education level, age at marriage, age at
first birth and physical or sexual violence experienced by women) which aim to
reflect the status, role and empowerment of women in the society.
The
key findings of the assessment made in the Survey include: Over the last 10-15
years, India’s performance improved on 14 out of 17 indicators of women’s
agency, attitudes, and outcomes. On seven of them, the improvement has been
such that India’s situation is comparable to that of a cohort of countries
after accounting for levels of development.

The
Survey encouragingly notes that gender outcomes exhibit a convergence pattern,
improving with wealth to a greater extent in India than in similar countries so
that even where it is lagging, it can expect to catch up over time. The Survey,
however, cautions that on several other indicators, notably employment, use of
reversible contraception, and son preference, India has some distance to
traverse because development has not proved to be an antidote.
Economic
Survey 2017-18 states that within India, there is significant heterogeneity,
with the North-Eastern states (a model for the rest of the country)
consistently out-performing others and not because they are richer; hinterland
states are lagging behind but the surprise is that some southern states do less
well than their development levels would suggest.
The
Economic Survey 2017-18 notes the challenge of gender is long-standing,
probably going back millennia, so all stakeholders are collectively responsible
for its resolution.
The
Survey thus recommends that India must confront the societal preference, even
meta-preference for a son, which appears inoculated to development. The skewed
sex ratio in favor of males led to the identification of “missing” women. But
there may be a meta-preference manifesting itself in fertility stopping rules
contingent on the sex of the last child, which notionally creates “unwanted”
girls, estimated at about 21 million, adds the Survey. Consigning these odious
categories to history soon should be society’s objective, opines the Survey.
The
survey acknowledges that government’s Beti Bachao, Beti Padhao
and Sukanya Samridhi Yojana schemes, and mandatory maternity leave rules are all
steps in the right direction. The Survey states that just as India has
committed to moving up the ranks in Ease of Doing Business indicators, a
similar commitment should be endeavored on the gender front.
***
DSM/OK/RM/SBS/MP/UP