UNITED NATIONS: Women in India are emerging as the architects of the country’s trajectory toward becoming a developed nation, taking on leadership roles in science, technology, and entrepreneurship, according to Women and Child Development Minister Annapurna Devi.
The Indian government has “recognised the infinite power of Nari Shakti” and “is moving ahead with women-led development, building a country where women lead the way as active architects” of “India's development trajectory toward a developed nation”, she said on Wednesday at a ministerial-level roundtable on digital and financial empowerment of women.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi has set 2047, the centenary of India's Independence, as the target date for the country to become a developed nation.
“India is a significant global leader in fostering women in STEM [science, technology, engineering and mathematics] and has created a strong foundation of women leaders of tomorrow in STEM field”, Devi said.
India is empowering women by increasing their workforce participation in non-conventional domains, “particularly riding the wave of advancement in artificial intelligence, machine learning or robotics”, she said.
Annapurna Devi said that Indian women’s roles range from space scientists leading the Mars orbiter project, Mangalayan, to drone pilots for a programme that has provided drones to 14, 500 women’s self-groups to ensure safe pesticide spraying on farms.
India’s UN Mission cosponsored the roundtable with UN Women, the world organisation’s arm for empowering women, on the sidelines of the 69th session of the Commission on the Status of Women,
On the digital front, India’s digital public infrastructure (DPI) is used to deliver social assistance, disability support, and universal health coverage, with a special focus on women’s health needs, and to track the nutrition, health, and growth needs of over 100 million women, children, and adolescent girls, Devi said.
The unified payment interface (UPI) developed in India that transformed routine payment transactions through digitisation has transcended barriers of gender, she said.
"Women increasingly are taking ownership of digital payment interface”, she said.
Sima Bahous, the executive director of UN Women, said, “India's leadership in developing the India Stack [a set of open programme interfaces] and unified payments interface (UPI) proves what is possible when inclusion is at the core of innovation”.
"Governments must invest in public digital infrastructure that puts women first”, she said.
Devi said the Indian government has invested heavily, in finance and in programmes, to empower women.
It has empowered millions of women entrepreneurs, from street vendors to entrepreneurs and startups, through a “bouquet of financial policies and schemes to nurture the growth from inception to scale”, she said.
Provisions for enhancing women’s economic capacities range from earmarking a proportion of government procurements for them to charging them a lower fee for patent applications which led to a 900 per cent increase in patent filings by women in the last five years, according to the minister.
To encourage early financial investment in the girl child, the government instituted a tax-exempt savings programme for their education, which is benefiting over 41 million girls, amassing savings worth over $2.3 billion.
UN Women Deputy Executive Director Kirsi Madi said, “As our strong partner, India has implemented multiple initiatives for the empowerment of women and girls.”
She gave the example of the "Beti Bachao Beti Padhao" ("Save the Girl Child, Educate the Girl Child") programme.
“The initiative has a strong financial inclusion component as well as promoting investments in the education of women and girls[ and] creating an enabling environment for the girls’ empowerment”, Madi said.