Al Ngullie
Dimapur | May 20
Nagaland state will have to put on hold all its women-parity claims for some time. The state isn’t doing too well on the gender empowerment front, as has been reiterated by a recent report of the Ministry of Child & Women Development and the United Nations Development Programme. In fact, the state – with its eternally self-professed claims of being a women-equivalence society – tails way below even states such as Bihar and Orissa on a good number of gender empowerment indices. Released only as a summery in New Delhi on March 8 earlier, the complete report, ‘Gendering Human Development Indices: Recasting the Gender Development Index and Gender Empowerment Measure for India 2009’ has finally been made available after two months.
The report listed out indices of human development, gender-development and Gender Empowerment Measure (‘GEM’). The scores and ranks secured by all the thirty-five Union Territories/states reflect their overall performance on human and gender development. These scores have indicated a disturbing level of gender-based disparities. Nagaland state fared a relatively little better on the human development scoreboard but on the gender empowerment chart, she fared sorry.
The GEM measured men and women’s active participation in political and economic life and their command over economic resources.
The report said to have focused on opportunities to capture gender inequality in political participation and decision-making power (or ‘PI’), economic participation and decision-making power (‘EI’) and power over economic resources (or ‘PoERI’). The aggregate GEM score for India was 0.451 in 2006. The HDI and GDI indices have been based on health, education and income indicators.
Of all the 35 Union Territories/states, Nagaland and Jammu & Kashmir ranked lowest with a Gender Empowerment Measure of 0.304 till 2006. Even Bihar, Jharkhand and Orissa at its lowest in 1996 scored 0.329. Andhra Pradesh scored the highest from rank 14th of 0.424 in 1996 to rank 1st in 2006 with 0.509.
In the index for political participation and decision-making power of women, Nagaland scored 0.166 up from 0. 450 in 1996. Likewise, in economic participation and decision-making power she secured 0.383 from 1996’s 0.341. In the index for power over economic resources, she scored 0.364 from 1996’s 0.205. In aggregate ratio, the GEM was a poor (and diminished) 0.304 from the 0.332 Nagaland scored in 1996.
On the human expectancy chart, Nagaland scored well with 0.765 in 2006 from 0.700 in 1996. On education/Knowledge based on seven+ literacy rate and years of education’ the state scored 0.644, up from 0.626 in 1996. On the index for “decent standard of living with earned income”, Nagaland made a good 0.727 from 0.666 in 1996.
The consistently low-scores of the low-income states, the report said, reiterate the fact that the central and state governments in concern must give greater attention to giving and improving access to infrastructure, health, education and income-earning. Gender development and empowerment indices have not improved in India particularly in low-income states, including Nagaland. According to the report, Nagaland state, with several others, is at the “lower end” when it comes to women empowerment.
