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More Gender Inequality in India Than Pakistan, Bangladesh: UN

India ranks lower than Bangladesh and Pakistan on gender inequality according to the UN's Human Development Report 2015. While India ranks 130th overall on the Human Development Index, it ranks 130th out of 155 countries on the Gender Inequality Index due to lower rates of women's political representation, secondary education and labor force participation compared to its neighbors. The report also finds that India's female labor force participation has declined significantly from 35% in 1990 to 27% in 2013.

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33 views

More Gender Inequality in India Than Pakistan, Bangladesh: UN

India ranks lower than Bangladesh and Pakistan on gender inequality according to the UN's Human Development Report 2015. While India ranks 130th overall on the Human Development Index, it ranks 130th out of 155 countries on the Gender Inequality Index due to lower rates of women's political representation, secondary education and labor force participation compared to its neighbors. The report also finds that India's female labor force participation has declined significantly from 35% in 1990 to 27% in 2013.

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myatdivyamittals2
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© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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15 TH- DEC

PAPER- I
POVERTY
AND
DEVELOPMEN
TAL
ISSUES

More gender inequality in India than Pakistan, Bangladesh: UN


HDR-2015
HDI:BANGLADESH
PAKISTAN
INDIA

142 / 188
147 / 188
130 / 188

GII:BANGLADESH
PAKISTAN
INDIA

111 / 155
121 / 155
130 / 155

Among South Asian countries, India fares better than only Afghanistan which is
at 152.
The index captures inequalities in gender-specific indicators: reproductive
health measured by maternal mortality ratio and adolescent birth rates,
empowerment quantified by share of parliamentary seats and attainment in
education, and economic activity measured by labour market participation
rate.
But with respect to each parameter on the gender index, India lags behind
both its neighbours. Consider this:
* Merely 12.2 per cent of parliamentary seats are held by women in India as
against 19.7 in Pakistan and 20 in Bangladesh.
* India is also beset with a high maternal mortality rate of 190 deaths per
100,000 live births as compared to 170 pregnancy-related deaths per 100,000
births in both Bangladesh and Pakistan.
* In percentage of women receiving secondary education, Bangladesh at 34
per cent far outperforms India at 27 per cent.
* On labour force participation rate for women, Bangladesh is at 57 per cent,
India is at 27 per cent.
* In all the above indexes, Indias performance is way below the South Asian
average.
The only parameter where India fares slightly better is the adolescent birth
rate, which is the number of births per 1000 women aged 15 to 19 years. A
lower adolescent birth rate indicates a female population that is more in
control of its choices when it comes to marrying and conceiving late.
On this scale, Indias figures are much better than that of Bangladesh as well
as the South Asian average, though Pakistans record is marginally better than
Indias.
UNDP officials state that over the last couple of years, Indias GII values have
improved slightly from 0.61 to 0.563. This is mainly due to improvements in

maternal mortality rate and womens representation in parliaments in this


period though other indicators have remained stagnant.
The HDR 2015, which is focused on the issue of work, also documents a global
drop in female labour force participation rate, which is the proportion of
working-age population in paid employment or looking for paid work. This is
owing mainly to the steep reduction for India, from 35 per cent women in 1990
to 27 per cent in 2013, and China from 73 per cent to 64 per cent in the same
period, said Yuri Afanasiev, UNDP resident representative in India.
Criticism:Self-Employed Womens workforce participation, by virtue of its invisibility, is
largely under-counted in much of the government surveys.
These surveys fail to capture details on large number of women in agriculture
since land is in the name of the man. Due to this invisibility in official data,
such women are often bereft of benefits such loans or seeds which the landholding men are eligible for.

India ranks 130th out of 188 on Human Development Index in 2014


Global Human Development report, released by the United Nations
Development Programme (UNDP), has placed India at 130 among 188
countries.
Highlights:

With a score of 0.609 on HDI, India stands well below the average score
of 0.630 for countries in the medium human development group. But it is
marginally above the South Asian countries average score of 0.607.

India stands higher than neighbours Bangladesh and Pakistan but lower
than countries like Namibia, Guatemala and Tajikistan, even Iraq.

Norway tops the HDI ranking, followed by Australia, Switzerland and


Denmark.

Data show that life expectancy at birth in India has over the past
decade risen from 64.5 years (in 2005) to 68 years in 2014. Similarly,
mean years of schooling have increased from 4.8 to 5.4 over the same
period.

Per-capita incomes in India have also risen significantly, from $3239 to


$5497 (at 2011 purchasing-power parity).

On the gender development index (GDI), with a value of 0.795, India


ranks behind Bangladesh (0.917), Namibia, Guatemala, even

Tajikistan. GDI measures gender inequalities on three dimensions health


(measured by female and male life expectancy at birth), education
(measured by expected years of schooling for female and male children,
and mean years for adults aged 25 years and older); and command over
economic resources (measured by estimated female and male GNI per
capita).

On the gender inequality index (GII), India stands at 130 among 155
countries, well behind Bangladesh and Pakistan, which are ranked 111 and
121 respectively. GII is based on reproductive health (measured by
maternal mortality and adolescent birth rates), empowerment (measured
by the share of parliamentary seats held by women and attainment in
secondary and higher education by each gender), and economic activity
(measured by the labour market participation rate for women and men).

About HDI:
The Human Development Index is based on assessing progress on three
dimensions of human development. First, a long and healthy life measured
through life expectancy of the population. Second, access to knowledge
measured by mean years of education among the adult population, and access
to learning and knowledge measured by expected years of schooling for
children of school-entry age. And last, standard of living measured by the
countrys per-capita gross national income (GNI).

PAPER-II
VULNERABLE

Operation Smile-II to start from 1 January 2016

SECTION

Union Government on 14 December 2015 requested the states and Union


Territories (UT) to start Operation Smile-II from 1 January 2016. The operation
will end on 31 January 2016.
In this regard, the Union Home Secretary, Rajiv Mehrishi has written a letter to
the Chief Secretaries of all states and Union Territories for participation in
Operation Smile-II in their respective State/UT.
Operation Smile-II is a campaign to rescue/rehabilitate the missing children. It

is a follow up of the exercise Operation Smile that helped in rescuing and


rehabilitating 9146 missing children.
INTERNATION
AL
Saudi Arabia announces 34-state Islamic military alliance against

terrorism
Saudi Arabia has announced the formation of a 34-state Islamic military
alliance to combat terrorism. A long list of Arab countries such as Egypt, Qatar,
the United Arab Emirates, together with Islamic countries Turkey, Malaysia,
Pakistan and Gulf Arab and African states were mentioned. Shiite Muslim Iran,
Sunni Saudi Arabias arch rival for influence in the Arab world, was absent from
the states named as participants, as proxy conflicts between the two regional
powers rage from Syria to Yemen.
The United States has been increasingly outspoken about its view that Gulf
Arab states should do more to aid the military campaign against the Islamic
State militant group based in Iraq and Syria. In a rare press conference, 30year-old deputy crown prince and Defense Minister Mohammed bin Salman
told reporters that the campaign would coordinate efforts to fight terrorism
in Iraq, Syria, Libya, Egypt and Afghanistan, but offered few concrete
indications of how military efforts might proceed.
Saudi Arabia and its Gulf Arab neighbors have been locked in nine months of
warfare with Iran-allied rebels in neighboring Yemen, launching hundreds of air
strikes there. Islamic State has pledged to overthrow the monarchies of the
Gulf and have mounted a series of attacks on Shiite Muslim mosques and
security forces in Kuwait and Saudi Arabia.

PAPER-III
ENVIORNMEN
T

Paris pact: South Korea, some Gulf nations may join


developed list
ONE OF the first implications of the Paris Agreement on climate change is
likely to be a formal reclassification of countries known as developed, with
South Korea and some others in the Gulf expected to join the club.

Background:The UN Framework Convention on Climate Change of 1992 had two annexes.


The first contained a list of 37 countries which were held mainly responsible
for causing global warming through their greenhouse gas emissions over the
last 100 years. The second had a shorter list of 25 rich countries, all part of the
first annex as well, who were held responsible for providing financial
assistance to other countries in the fight against climate change.
Till now, a reference to developed countries meant the countries which were
named in the first annex, Annex-I. When it came to financial obligations,
developed or rich countries meant the countries listed in the second annex,
Annex-II. All the other countries were categorised as developing.
But the Paris Agreement has broken away from the Annex-I and Annex-II lists.
There is no mention of these in the text. As such a new definition of developed
countries has to emerge, probably before the next annual climate change
conference in 2016.
The existing developed countries were very keen to ensure that their club gets
increased so that their burden of obligations in climate change regime is more
broadly shared. There are many more countries that are much better off now
than they were in 1992. US President Barack Obama is understood to have
referred to the example of South Korea several times in his conversations with
other leaders. Some countries in the Gulf, like Saudi Arabia, are also
mentioned in this context. These countries have so far been aligning
themselves with the rest of the developing country bloc in the climate change
negotiations.
Responsibility of Developed:The developed countries in the Paris Agreement have two broad kinds of
obligations that developing countries dont. They need to undertake absolute
greenhouse gas emission reductions, and they need to provide money and
technology for the developing countries to be able to effectively deal with
climate change.
Challenge ahead:The newer candidates for inclusion in the developed club can be relatively
comfortable with fulfilling the second obligation, of providing money and
technology. But it is the first obligation, that of reducing their emissions in
absolute terms, that might compel them to resist being included in the
developed club. These countries do not have any historical emissions like
the original developed countries have. But the Paris Agreement has also
largely junked the concept of historical responsibility.
Solution:It is here that the replacement of the world shall with should in the
provision dealing with developed countries taking lead in reducing emissions
through absolute reductions might come in handy in persuading more
countries in accepting the label of developed nations.
Another term that Paris Agreement has left undefined as of now is equity.
The agreement says it will be implemented on the basis of equity. The word

equity appears several times in the agreement text.


Attempts to define the word equity have been going on for several years in the
climate talks and several formulations have been proposed. India, for example,
prefers equity to be defined in per capita terms, like per capita emissions, per
capita energy access, or even per capita GDP, but many other countries have
other ideas involving a combination of economic and social criteria.
Defining equity will be the next big argument in the climate change talks, as
that will decide the kind of obligation each country will have in the Paris
Agreement.

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