It’s close to my heart, says NDTV Profit’s 2-30 Factor anchor (perhaps Manvi Dhillon) this afternoon. She runs a news coverage in which Roopa Purushothaman of the research-analysis outfit, Future Capital says that if more women join the Indian workforce, it would add $35 billion to GDP in 5 years.
Today’s ET has more details. Roopa’s survey covers 2000 women belonging largely to middle class, and she makes her prediction based on several parameters. Nothing wrong there. Surveys such as hers dealing on economic indicators are fairly frequent these days, and almost all of them predict that golden days await India.
Golden days for whom? And here Manvi’s telling it a second time that the issue is close to her heart assumes significance. I think when she says this she doesn’t mean women’s increasing ability to splurge money in time to come. I rather feel she has this women-are-powerful sort of thinking in mind when she makes the comment twice. If so, it’s not reflective of what really ails India.
True, women’s power is an important social issue. But just as Muhammad Yunus’ predominantly women-oriented Grameen Bank model has failed to reduce poverty level in Bangladesh (see this story), similarly it is a fallacy to imagine that India’s middle-class women’s greater prosperity will do away with the ills that plague our society.
India’s society is deeply caste-ridden, and its muslim minority is heavily backward. Child labor is still rampant despite laws against it, and this is so because their parents are so poor that they cannot afford not to let them earn with their little hands. No real succor reaches the poor farmers in times of need, so they are forced to take own lives to avoid debts. If the rains fail a single year, the farmers are reduced to abject poverty.
These and more are what India is today. Therefore to think about Indian middle-class women’s increasing earnings is nothing but a sad reminder of BJP’s ill-timed India Shining campaign during last elections.
Coming back to Manvi’s saying, you may ask, does it matter? It doesn’t, as long as it is an opinion she keeps within her private circle. But saying it twice on the trot on TV gives it an altogether different dimension. Hence this opinion.
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