WOMEN AND THE 12TH FIVE YEAR PLAN:

WOMEN AND THE 12^TH FIVE YEAR PLAN:

 Our country has gone through 11 five year plans.  In all these plans it no attention has been given to the discriminatory status of women.  This amounts to gross injustice to women.

Thanks to Dr. Ambedkar and the dalith movement, the daliths have got some mention in the five year plans.  This is an admission of the fact that our society had practiced a wrong kind of reservation policy where the upper caste enjoyed all the benefits by oppressing the daliths.

When we come to women we have identical situation.  While men enjoy all power, position and privileges women were treated as second rate and lower human species.  The theory of patriarchy puts the question of women in a proper perspective.

Just as planning attempts at abolishing poverty and caste discrimination, in the similar manner and with greater determination planning should try to abolish the discriminatory status of women in the society.  Mind you women constitute 50% of the population.  If their proportion to men is coming down then it is a discriminatory planning on the part of the society to abolish women or reduce their number, as if they are probably necessary evil in the society and therefore less they are in number the better.

In the context of this unwritten principle ruling in the society, women should be recognized at least now while preparing the 12^th five year plan.

If you ask me what issues should be addressed in the 12^th five year plan to correct the status of women then I should say we should review women’s movements and try to understand their demands as legitimate and overdue since the beginning of humankind.  Women should get equal right to the property.  No stretch of imagination can deny that this is a central to granting the women equality with men in the society.  This right should be seen in action.  When we speak about equality of women with men it does not mean that there are no differences.  Differences should not result in the lower status for women.  The biological difference between women and men and therefore the biological role of women should give women greater consideration and status.

 The 12^th five year plan should work for giving women opportunity for education, nutrition and health care so that they can live and work in the society shoulder to shoulder with men.  Coming to the basics the nutrition of women is a matter of concern for all women in all levels of the society.  Similarly health care is of prime importance.   Given their biological role they should be enjoying a privileged position in health care.  It is often the opposite.  Women’s work at home should get due economic recognition as adding value to the national production.

The 12^th five year plan should ensure monitoring of implementation of programmes so that it will guarantee that women get these fundamental rights.  By the end of the 12^th five year plan a quantifiable change should be achieved in the position of women.

One very important requirement to achieve these objectives is the political empowerment of women.  This should not be the goal only of women’s organizations and movements but also a goal of the government.  Women then will ensure that they are in the centre stage in the planning process along with men.  Women are not just ‘planned for’ but they actually plan.  They will plan not just for themselves but for the society.  Because when women enjoy equal status with men it is then men become and the society becomes a sane society.  Women should be given equal role and responsibilities in the political, administrative and judiciary functions of the state.

There is no need here to go into individual items of the planning where by these above mentioned goals are achieved.  The women’s movements have done a better job in this.  One just needs to go through their demands over the history of the movement to get suggestions.