he
fundamental purpose of genuine national development is the empowerment
of all citizens and the building of their capacity to shape their
own lives. This means the availability of options for sustainable
livelihoods, the ability to access available opportunities and a genuine
participation of all in decision making in matters concerning
self, family and society. In India, where 100 high net-worth individuals
earn more than the income of half the population put together, this
fundamental purpose clearly seems to have been hijacked by other
considerations.
The disparity in the abilities
to access development opportunities is not a matter of chance. It is the
direct outcome of policies deliberately formulated and carefully
implemented – by the politically powerful few, who are, or who act as
the agents of, the financially rich few. The outcome is the huge and
concentrated amassing of the country’s wealth by a small number of
individuals; the accumulation of which rests almost entirely on
exploitation – of people and nature. The other side of the "development"
coin is a large sea of poverty, deprivation, environmental degradation
and creation of a large population underequipped to access decent jobs
and improved lives
It is therefore not surprising,
that half of the country’s population survives at the margins of the
economy, providing a pool of cheap labour as and when required but
otherwise consigned to an oblivion from which they have no ability or
means to escape. And a great portion of these are women in the villages
and slums of our nation, perhaps 400 million or more, whose entire lives
are spent in the drudgery and deprivation of working non-stop in
household chores – all without pay. Were the value of these activities
to be reflected in the national accounts, the GNP could well be doubled
overnight.
We cannot expect the change we
desperately require to come from either the government or businesses. It
must come from people themselves, possibly encouraged and enabled by
civil society organisations concerned with the viability of India’s
future and the lives of our children.
The key to bringing about this
change is to set in motion a self-reinforcing process that rapidly
brings poor women into a new life of dignity, confidence and
self-determination. This means that we have to identify the critical
intervention that will set us on the path to the tipping point from
where the change in women’s lives becomes self-propelling.
From the perspective of
Development Alternatives (DA), the most effective intervention is
remunerative jobs for women. For this to happen, the first step is to
enable women to read, write and do simple arithmetic. The next steps are
to provide her the skills needed to work in a local business or set up
her own enterprise, all of which are provided by DA and its sister
agency TARA.
We believe that these
programmes, which are amenable to support from government, corporations,
CSR programmes and high net worth individuals are the most important
single intervention that can ensure a sustainable future for our country
and make it a better place to live in – for the rich and the
poor.
q