 bit disappointing that we don't have more people at this plenary but then on the other hand the ones who are here are obviously very committed so we will have quality rather than quantity focus on this. So a very warm welcome, a very warm welcome to this plenary on changing mindsets India's missing women. I draw your attention to the subheading of the World Economic Forum says committed to improving the state of the world and I believe as I'm sure the panel let's do and you do that we cannot improve the state of the world if we do not talk about 50% of the population of this world and I must congratulate the World Economic Forum for bringing this topic as a plenary in this session. I think this is tremendously important and I look forward to the next hour and a quarter on this discussion. Of course this term missing women was originally coined by Professor Amrit Sen when he talked about the issue of a distorted sex ratio in India but over time the concept of missing women must not be taken just to mean prenatal infanticide it is actually much more serious than that is basically excess female mortality through the entire life cycle of course at birth or before birth at birth at the age of five and then during reproductive years women are systematically discriminated against to the extent that their lives are taken let's not mince words we're talking about mortality here and what we have therefore to do is recognize that this excess female mortality in the world at large unfortunately 87% of this global excess female mortality comes from India China and Sub Saharan Africa not the poorer countries of the parts of the world actually I'm sure my panel members will agree that it has got nothing to do with income India unfortunately does not do well at all on the score of what is called the global statistics of gender gender gap report for example the World Economic Forum released a report just recently which ranks India 105th among 135 countries and is actually the lowest ranking among the BRICS countries last census 2011 India has a sex ratio of 940 whereas the global average is close to 984 so we obviously have a problem we have a very serious problem and I couldn't think of a better set of panelists than World Economic Forum has assembled here so let me introduce them in no particular order Krishna Thiruth minister of state for ministry of at the ministry of women and child development Anuradha Kaurala a founder Maithi Nepal Rajendra Singh Pawar chairman of NIIT group of India Chhavi Rajavath she is a surpunch of soda she's many other things too but I'm most interested in having her here as a surpunch of a village council of soda Malika Sarabhai director Darpana Academy of Performing Arts and as you will find a very very committed passionate advocate of the issues at hand and Jasmine Whitbread she is the chief executive officer of Save the Children International UK so with this panel my challenge will be just to keep them to a time limit because I know they've got a lot of things to say interesting things to say and I'll start off by going first to minister Thiruth and basically ask you madam that India in spite of the grim statistics I've talked about is not wanting for legislation the legislations are there but in spite of that we have what we have which is a pretty grim situation so madam minister may I ask you what's your thought on legislation part of the solution implementation where do we stand more importantly where do you see it going thank you mr nag I know it's a burning issue today and not in India even as globally this problem as constitution gives equal right to men and women even then the women are missing in India much as you said 940 out of 1000 the sex ratio now this problem is largely due to sun preference because in our society everybody wants son not a daughter if they want single a child then a son son preference is turned due to several factors such as deep root deep rooted social and culture norms for example son are supposed to carry family name take care of the parents in old age light the funeral pyre etc etc these are the problem that's family need son and however now the technology now it is possible to know this child sex by ultrasound it is one side it is good for the other disease but the other side is not good because of the sex selection is possible today which was possible earlier hence number of girls child is getting less and we are facing the problem of declining child sex ratio so to how to fight with this we have some legislation you told me that you everybody knows about legislation but I would like to say something on the legislation these are the legislation we brought out several legislation prevent this problem um non missing women our constitution provides equal equality between men and women my ministry brought several legislation on the protection of women empowerment of women such as dowry prohibition act prohibition prevention of domestic violence prevention of immoral trafficking act and provision of child marriage act we also have the preconception and prenatal diagnosis technique etc pcb act we are introducing amendment further strengthen these acts and hold consultation of the civil society organization from time to time presently held constitution with women MPs we have already discussed with the women MP how to solve this problem the child decline so uh strengthening dowry provision act also my ministry has it early recently enacted the protection of child from sexual offense bill from sexual offense act 2012 even then the problem is there I think um my ministry there are only legislation cannot be a solution if we make uh this legislation and we say that this problem will be solved no it will not be solved but real solution is empowering women and improving the status of women in the society for this our efforts are multi-pronged in ensure political social and economic empowerment of women recently we um NMEW national empowerment of women we have already created this session education and awareness plays a very important role we have introduced schemes like Sabla IGMSI Sabla Rajiv Gandhi empowerment adolescent girls we are giving training training in this Sabla scheme giving training to women child girl child 11 to 18 years old the national mission for empowerment of women to improve the status of girl child and women Sabla is scheme of empowering of adolescent girls through life skill education so that they can the agent of change in the society we can say Ahimsa messengers and we have already uh create some Ahimsa messengers at Pali in Rajasthan Kamroop um in Assam and 320 20 Ahimsa messengers so they can they can aware they can give awareness to the uh people so these are the things so we can improve the girl child thank you madam minister uh you're right i mean you know you need legislation but you also need empowerment but i'll come back to you in a moment uh on enforcement what are you doing to enforce the legislation that you have you have some very good legislation on the books but what are you doing about those who violate it but i'll come back to you through awareness through awareness but i'll come back to you madam minister and i'll push you a bit on that but first if i may go to jasmine uh jasmine you of course have a very broad international perspective so could you share with us some of the international regional experiences with some reference to the issues that madam minister herself has raised that's sure yes i mean i think for india this very low value placed on the lives of girls and women has got to be really the key issue that india faces and when countries face big attitude and belief type issues like that that that need to be shifted um my experience is looking around the world and actually in the history of india as well um we can see that multi-level national sustained campaigns can shift mindsets so um whether you're thinking about civil rights movements or the breaking down of gender or other discrimination issues more recently the uh whole taboo that's been broken around very successfully in some countries around hiv and aides um but what's needed is a campaign that targets action at many levels of society and i think the danger is here in india it would be the search for a silver bullet or some quick wins this has got to be something that really government together with civil society and business leaders all come together to make that campaign work and that would really need the backing of of a sustained media campaign with with public figures getting involved i mean we've seen in in south africa the the role that that um soap operas can play in terms of in in in that case around hiv and aides and i know there's great examples here in india as well but also public figures celebrities and public figures coming out and talking about these issues and being prepared to to break the taboo and to to really start to to create an environment of change um as well as that there will need to be policy steps taken sort of at all levels really whether it's at school or in the community level um or in business and i think perhaps we'll come back to that but picking up on this issue of of legislation that you talk about i think um the key issue there is as as you were pushing around actually making the legal and justice system work for girls and women families and communities have got to really believe that um you know if they need to go to the police that that the action will be taken a great example of this i think here in india is in the state of kerala where uh a a whole sort of network of police stations has been set up that are designed to be friendly to women and to girls and women making um wanting to bring uh uh complaints to the police where typically across the country they're very fearful of doing that because they don't have any sense that that they're going to be supported and protected when they when they do come forth with those complaints so there are examples here in india as well as from around the world of how to tackle this thanks jasmine thanks very much you have really touched on a dimension which is very important for us at this session and that is basically challenging the conspiracy of silence people would rather not talk about it because of the stigma and you mentioned kerala and we have somebody here who i know has actually worked on it so molly i would like you to take it on from there but also talk a bit about the use of media use of entertainment to actually push forward this agenda and breaking this conspiracy of silence malika i'm glad that jasmine has mentioned the kerala episode uh i am partially malayali and i started going to the state very frequently about five years ago and having been brought up on the myth of a matriarchal matrilineal state i was absolutely horrified at the repression of girls in kerala i was talking to a bunch of girls and they were talking of how they get molested on the bus and i said were you the only woman and she said no we were about 20 of us so i said why didn't you shout and she said because had i shouted the other 19 women would have turned away and they would have said just shut up and suffer because it is shameful to bring this upon yourself and you are the one who are shamed so i started working with the kerala state women's development corporation and we developed a film based on case studies fictionalized and i took it to 40,000 women across universities and colleges in kerala and the result of that was a presentation to the minister which led to this policy called nirbhaya on which i was very fortunate to be a part of it and the thing about nirbhaya is that it roped in every ministry the minister understood that this was not a woman's problem that the gdp which is everybody's god at the moment gets affected if women get back into the workforce or if women's work is recognized and the reason of bringing everybody in was exactly this that just the police station working wouldn't matter so they also set up women's shelter homes they also set up a training program for the panchayats to become more women friendly they encouraged villagers to come and report any kind of exploitation of women beating of girl children trafficking of women to the panchayat and they created an entire line where people could go and tell others who would take action so that is the kerala model on the media the only kind of woman that we offer up to the young girl young men is a bimbo and if this is how we are treating women in advertisements in television in bollywood the only women we show as being successful are women who are jetting their breasts out or whatever and this is this is this is what young girls aspire to be and one of the most frightening things jasmine you haven't seen this is to see three-year-olds dressed up like the most vulgar female figures in bollywood and pouting and doing this without understanding the repercussions of what this is doing and you are telling boys that this is okay to actually pick them up use them and throw them away is fine your government your ministers your mls your chief of police your judges are telling girls that you are provoking men and therefore dress better you are wearing jeans and therefore men are raping you there are ministers who are saying that 90 percent of women who are raped enjoy the sex i mean the problem the fact that so few business leaders are here it's just a non-issue for them malika very well said very well said and i think that's exactly what we want to move in but the other side is that the business leaders who are here are very very committed and their partners and allies in this course but i think malika we will have to take this and i hope this is not the first time that we will do it because what you have said i think strikes a chord in anybody who thinks about it and anybody who knows what's really happening let me move from what malika has raised and is doing to a live example something which is very very serious and something which is just across our border i was in nipal in 1993 when i heard about the founding of an institution called maithi nipal and we're very fortunate today to have anuradha kaurala who is the founder of maithi nipal what i would like to ask you anuradha ji is if you would share with us how you started this how you improved or enhanced the awareness how you dealt with the issue of trafficking and what results you have seen and basically what one person can do to make a difference anuradha ji when i first started in 1990 this problem existed the trafficking of women and children existed before since 1926 but nobody spoke about it because the system was such the political system was such and when in 90s we had established democracy then people started talking about it but they were all talking in a big hotel in a five-star hotel in a closed room but the problem was not existing there they were all saying the problem was in the villages but nobody wanted to go there so what i first did was i just collected few people i thought like always we make programs for women and child children and women but the youth were always missing so i targeted the university children media people because media was always writing what was only said in the city i really wanted them to see what the villages and what the problems are and then i took the judges and the lawyers with my group and the police because police had to go because i they were the ones who could take the cases and not take the cases so i wanted the police to come also so we made a big group and of 210 people and there were eight districts which were most vulnerable to trafficking so we went from village to village talking to people about trafficking the whole day we would talk to the people on the field because they would be in the field and but we made a point that in the evening they came to the village school and we had the police band with us and we played the police band with the very our folk songs and the people would gather and we did not know nobody knew if there was a trafficker there if our mother was there the five parents were there or the girl was pray so we had message for everybody so we started spreading message for to the people there the lawyers would tell them about the trafficking laws and the police would tell them how to report and a girl from the university pretended to be a traffic survivor and she would tell about the trafficking and the doctors would tell them about HIV AIDS but the impact about this whole tour which we made on the eight districts was that the police where it was reported that one hundred and fifty thousand Nepali girls were in India but when we saw the report in the police list there was only sixteen hundred missing so nobody went to report to the police so now as you know as Malika also very nicely said I think if you go to the police it's very obvious honorable minister also I think would agree to this it's very obvious that if you go to the police in this region and report as a parent if I go and report and say my daughter is missing they will definitely say oh she must have eloped with someone or she must have gone with someone don't bother about it because she is a girl she is discriminated there if a boy was lost a boy would be I they would have made a big search for them so then after we went to the villages now the parents started reporting to Mythi Nepal not to the police though we are not the state they reported to us because we started now building good rapport with the police also and the government also and all the clients back in all the clients are also not very bad some clients are very good and they when the girl cries they ask the girl the address and they write to their parents and say please go your daughter is in so and so place please go and report to Mythi Nepal so they come to us and with the address so we have our partner organization in India and now also in Middle East and also across the border we having problem with China also so we have our partner organization so we write to them and that is how we rescue the girls thank you thank you very much and I'll come back to you in this because I think this is an inspiring example of what can happen when this is how you can change the society right and how you can change it let me bring in now chavi chavi you as a surpunch you are seeing it at the ground level so please tell us what roles you think local community can play and I think it will be good if you can also relate with what Malika race the whole issue of the icon the role models what sort of women are sort of you know playing a role model for the young girls and boys chavi certainly well I'd like to touch upon the topic not in terms of the missing women that have already been spoken by but also in terms of the missing women in terms of the inability of them to contribute especially at the grassroots level and I'm referring more so to the elected representatives because by and large if you really look at the women in villages there is no education there is no formal training about the roles they can play as an elected representatives so the concept of being a role model really is not even there because themselves do not know how to perform their roles and on top of that having a family commitment which obviously women cannot get away from having an average size of say five children per household so they have to work in the fields more than eight hours they waste the time not having toilets in the houses they waste a lot of time walking distances to find a place to to defecate out in the open they have to spend time in taking care of their children of of the families of cooking and then to find time out to play the role of an elected representative to develop the areas it actually is really really difficult in addition to which the challenges as we know in rural villages in India are monumental so I think it's very important that we incentivize these women because right now the women across the PRIs the panchayati raj institutions are disincentivized given the fact that what punches so I'm the serpents who's the elected head of the panchayat of the village council along with me in my team alone there are seven other women and four men but these what punches the other elected representatives in my council they only make on an average 225 rupees per month that's their honorarium as a serpents my honorarium is much higher which is 3000 rupees a month but I am a step away I'm somebody who who doesn't really fit the norm of an average serpents I have the backing of education of my family economically secure but by and large serpents are not and to have an honorarium as little as 3000 rupees it clearly is something that doesn't incentivize people especially women to come forward to take the role yes we have had quota system because of which states like mine see 50 percent representation of women but is that representation good enough if they're incapable of performing their duties I of course like I said being a step away from the normal norms there were actually what would be interesting to note is that there were 50 men the older men from the village who came to me to plead that I become the serpents of the village and that was primary because within the village they had not really found anyone who could bring about any incremental change that in their lives the reason they came to me was because in the late 70s my grandfather who was abrigated ago we sing he was awarded the gallery award Chakra and he they brought him in the same manner and he brought in a lot of development in the village he stuck around for 15 years but between him and me there's been a gap of 20 years and what of the village saw in terms of development of roads of introduction of a health center of education institutions schools foot for the girls specifically linkages of roads all of this happened because of him post which informally my family had always been around for the villagers in case they ever needed help and I'm guessing that's the reason why they chose me and for me it's really been no looking back I have to admit it is a challenge but what is really really satisfying is is is how even small differences can bring about such such a huge difference to the lives of people and my village has a population of about 10 000 people and to be able to bring about that modest incremental change in their lives is what is more satisfying and fulfilling what I am trying to do and focusing more on the topic specifically is basically I'm trying to focus on the youth and the women in particular and provide them training focusing more on governance training because I believe that if you want to see women be respected respect in the society there has to be a value attached to them and people need to be able to see that and I think by providing such training not only will I be making life easier for them when they take up roles such as I have taken and thereby perform activities and duties and also be able to focus on issues related to women what often happens is that having the kind of women who become elected representatives at the grassroots level people don't come forward and by and large they're men who actually work so it's a proxy thing so say for example if I were married which I'm not so I don't have those commitments but if I was a regular serpent normally my husband my son or my brother would be performing all the activities and I would merely be just signing more often not not even signing the documents that I'm supposed to sign as a serpent and that's what normally happens with the women who get elected but if they have the formal training they will be able to perform and also I've noticed in my village out of a team of seven women there are two women who have smaller families they only have two kids each and in those family you can see that there is respect for their girl child they are educating their girls they are training them and giving them opportunities to rise up and and and say for example stand up in debates even if it be within their own communities they are giving them those platforms and these women are the ones who are a little more proactive vis-a-vis the other women who have larger families so I think it's also important to realize that family planning is critical because of as already pointed out earlier the issues attached to the the stigma is attached to girl child and to women has to do I mean it's it's it's multi multifold but I think by just adding that value one can change things and having women be competent enough to perform their roles at this level can change the face and the situation that girls and women face in such areas thanks chevy I'll come back to you after I've gone through with Rajendra and I'll ask you about how you have seen improvements if any in the status of women in your village very specifically over the last five 10 15 years and I'd like to link up with something Jasmin you had said and I'll request Malika to reflect a bit on that when I come to you Jasmin mentioned I think a very important point there is no silver bullet you can't have just one it has to be a variety so Malika if you could sort of think about bringing in what are the things that you could do you've raised the issues which I think are very very appropriate and relevant but what would you do about them using media but let me first go to Rajendra and bring in Rajendra your perspective as chairman of a large IT group how are you using opportunities to empower women in your organization in specifically and maybe broadly and how can that be a model for empowering women because one message that we're hearing both from the minister and from chubby is this whole issue of empowerment how are you being able to push that agenda so I think first I understood the meaning of the odd man out today in this panel for the first time and last three days I've been very frantically trying to talk to my wife and my two daughters to say this whole thing of missing women I need to get a little better prepared and so the joke in the home was my son is in Bombay I'm normally not at home so they said ours is the case of missing men it's not missing women but my elder daughter is a psycho analyst and the younger one is in LSR aggressive young girls so they had very interesting takes on this issue of missing women and because my earlier view was about the girl child for example but then the issue of girls missing from school because we don't have toilets is an example of missing women for example or the fact that and this my elder daughter was a psychoanalyst made a very strong point that the the reinforcement of this son preference thing is actually implemented by women though they're victims of the process so they're actively implementing this son preference question so becomes that much more difficult to implement but coming to the the context within which you want me to talk which is the corporate sector so first of all I recognize that that is a very miniscule percentage you know eight million people out of a billion in the corporate sector is miniscule so I don't know how relevant the context will be but within that I think there are a couple of interesting changes one is that I think that the economy is becoming now a services led economy so more than half of GDP comes from services and services lend themselves to being delivered by women in my view better than by men look at banking look at finance look at education so there is a natural I think advantage that women have because of their emotional superiority if I can use the word to engage with people on the other side our industry which is the IT industry has almost 40 percent as women and we have two companies we have a software company we have an education company so one thing which has happened and I think we probably did it deliberately that both the HR chiefs are women they've joined the company 30 years ago one of them the other one 25 years ago did various functions and ended up in this function and the HR function has a large number of women so I guess there is we have perhaps in some way wanted to do that recognizing the fact that this correction has to be done and so we find that given the fact that these sectors have very large percentage of women we heard we've heard of the BPO question and the security of women and so on so there's a heightened sensitivity to concerns about women in this sector and therefore we have a lot of policies we introduced 20 years ago a policy called paternity leave saying that if a man is working in the company and the wife is going to have a kid he better take leave and do what they're supposed to do so many of these policies have evolved but as I said this is still such a miniscule percentage that how much of this will rub off into the remaining 99 percent is a question mark but to the extent that in the corporate world since the services sector is becoming predominant and more and more women are coming in I think there's an awareness in their examples and role models the second point which I want to touch on perhaps larger implication is the role of technology and I think it's not fully leveraged but the promise of technology to deal with some of the problems we talked about is quite enormous example we have in India this program called Aadhaar the identity so I think the missing question the first answer is identity and so the attempt in India is to give each individual an identity and not just an electronic or a physical identity but then everyone is someone but again I think in the in tracing down people in terms of missing individuals and identifying them in this country we are beginning to now put in place a mechanism which is completely technology based which will at least establish identity so that in the administration of many actions of at all levels that will happen the second is mobility and the mobile device which means a connection connectivity I think this is an extremely empowering possibility so children get lost in the good old days now you just tell someone give a name and you can pretty much go to google get the address and find out so connectivity and connection is actually a liberating force it's a hugely liberating source we see now hundreds of examples of women in fact Bangladesh is the classic story of the women taking the phone and going home to home to rent it for a call but that empowerment and connection of a woman who's gone into a home with her relatives and parents and so on so she doesn't feel she's missing in that sense I think there's a huge opportunity of technology of connectivity then we look at education I think education is increasingly becoming a process which is taking us a way to experience exchange of information so in fact I don't want to belabor the the science of it but engaging human beings to experience interactions is what education should be and is becoming so therefore with the mobile or a handheld device sitting in on the top of corner of Mount Everest you could engage so I think technology perhaps has a much greater promise to deal with this very deep rooted attitudinal changes by making it possible for women to do things that they couldn't do to get educated to connect up to communicate to raise a hand and so on so forth so to me I think more than what the corporate sector can set as example is what technology can do to help women deal with this issue at all thanks thanks Rajendra let me turn to the minister now Madam minister the issue of enforcement is a very important one and if you could kindly comment a bit on that because some of the issues that panelists have raised is a question of enforcement of laws which are already there or regulations which are already there I think enforcement is the way only way legislation enforcement through awareness if you are aware to the people these are our law and I need the social help social activist help society help in that so now it's a burning issue and we are giving reservation and jobs 73rd and 74th amendment have brought political empowerment political empowerment of women to reservation just like chavi because in panchayati raj we have given earlier we have given 33 percent reservation now in local bodies and panchayati raj we have already given 50 50 percent reservation for women that's why compulsory they will come and they naturally they will empower so panchayati raj local urban bodies we are giving 50 percent reservation and through serve shikshaviyan right to education act we hope to improve the literacy level at girl child female level and the other empowerment of women we are giving just like a before said that sabla before if sabla scheme is there they are coming to at the Anganwadi centers bridge education is there their health problem we are solving their health problem giving some hygiene issues and I believe education is very important changing the status of women through our skill through our skill mission and livelihood mission our government is making efforts for economic empowerment of women these empowerment women awareness through awareness through society as I as I before said this ahimsa messenger we are creating ahimsa messenger so they can give awareness to the pure poor lady those who are living in a dark street they can help true I think those those are all very useful and important and I appreciate that but what do you do with your colleagues madam minister who make statements like they have which manika just referred to and that's just one example what you do about awareness in your own polity your own colleagues because there that's where people look up to and you hear a politician and I'm not mentioning a particular one who makes statements like we have heard I think that is just completely destroys any credibility I think it is very sad if they are giving us not if but they have they continue doing so so I think the the you know the issue is not here to sort of you know just talk about the problems but I had a meeting with the look by female MPs right and and and I discussed with them right maybe we all can aware of just may I say something to this female MPs are no better they also have the same mindset because in India Churya Tordini or Churya Pahini is supposed to be an insult where bangles and I have heard women MPs say to a male MP if you can't stand up and do that go home and put on bangles that is the worst insults to women because you are saying that if you are not man enough then go become a woman so female MPs do it as well so true but I think what madam minister is saying is that you've got to start somewhere but I think I'm going to push you a bit on that please do start somewhere female and male MPs because the awareness issue which I think you're absolutely correct has to be at all stages or all levels of the of the community including the political leadership just well let me bring you in at this point a point which chubby and Rajendra both have added which I think is very good missing women we've talked about that excess female mortality ratio which is the typical definition but missing women is also women who are not being able to reach their potential because of lack of facilities lack of education so what has saved the children doing about improving the various deficiencies for women for children girl children in this region sure I'll answer that question but I just also wanted to pick up on a couple of things that the panelists have brought up I the point about family planning I couldn't agree more on and in fact if you look at how Bangladesh has managed to achieve a lot for you know relatively comparatively to India a poor country but is actually on track to meet its millennium development goals on reducing child mortality a lot of that is around is around family planning enabling women to take charge of their own lives so I really wanted to endorse that and also another example on picking up on on your point about the use of technology but in a way this is a more positive example for India I think when you talked about 40% of people in in software engineering being women I mean that's a really positive thing I think India could learn from success stories as well I'm sit on the board of BT and I was very shocked to find that of all of our new hires and we are hiring people only 14% are women and when I challenged this at the board level the answer was over that's because it's engineering it's a technical area and so a couple of us women on the board said well hang on a second India does a much better job of this so so I just wanted to kind of put that out there as well and I and I do think that technology can help I think that studies have actually shown that mobile phones I mean this is very early days so I think more work is needed done meet done to look into this but studies have shown that where women do have access to mobile phones and often they don't because of financial they're not in charge of the finances of the family but where they do studies have shown that this decreases the rates of domestic violence exactly for the reasons that you were highlighting so I just wanted to pick up on those points point in terms of what say the children is doing well let's pick we work right across the spectrum but but let's look at education for example where both in India and around the world it is really important to ensure that children both girls and boys have access to school and that girls are really supported in in both entering school and in in being able to do well in school you talked about you know typically it's often thought that women are are are good teachers you were talking about that in terms of I mean personally I'm not so sure there's a massive difference at the end of the day between men and women depending if they're given equal rights and opportunities I think both men and women can be good teachers in many parts of the world there are only men male teachers and that actually can really hold back the the chances of girls of families feeling in rural areas feel confident sending their children to school of the girls feeling that they have a role model that they can emulate so I think education would be one area that I'd pick up on as as critical that say the children is focusing on thanks very much Jasmine Malika you have mentioned and so has Jasmine now talking about the icon the role model of women what do you think you can do or you are doing using your medium for that role for that purpose you know my father brought television to this country in 1968 to instantly be able to communicate with every village because he felt that that technology would transform India didn't happen he died and it became Durdarshan but through television through television we have been working with television and we've been taking the most popular genres of television you mentioned soaps in Nigeria did you in Africa there are hundreds of examples and we in India are a country which traditionally has studied and been educated value educated through song and dance and theater and sculpture and yet we don't see the writing on the wall whatever we've been doing for 65 years hasn't been very successful otherwise we wouldn't be in this conference here talking about this issue we have examples of how amazing performance television film can be in creating a different paradigm what hasn't been mentioned and I'd like to mention is that most village women do not even see that there is an alternative to the drudgery that they're living in and that's even more frightening that they don't see that it's anything to do with the woman's role the the answer is but that's a woman's fate so we haven't even gone as far as showing that there is a possibility of not living a life of misery and still being a woman and all of this can be reached very very quickly through the media I mean India is film and television crazy but we continue showing and advertising the most repressive and reprehensible roles of women continuously we are working and I have approached the ministry about this on specifically targeting to create a role model of a series of young adolescent girls and boys that can go on television and once they've been on television can actively go into schools and colleges after they become icons to become not only icons but real people that people can look up to that people can write to use Twitter use social media so that they become accessible they become the ones answering to others of their age group they become the ones showing others of their age group that it can be done differently and you can still win the popularity polls good at this point let me bring in the audience I have a question for chavi that I'd mentioned and for Unrathaji but I'll hold that off because maybe the audience would want to add to it so if you would if I can see you against the glare of the light feel free to raise some questions yes please the lady in the center there if somebody couldn't get her a microphone I'll take two or three bunch them together and then we'll get the panel to respond okay yeah I think the change for women in this country will come from rural women it will not probably come and come from really poor women it probably won't come from the middle class who already have you know things that they can manage in ways that they want to manage and they have certain choices that they make rural women don't have too many choices so I think that's where if we as a as a nation focus I think we would do a lot really to change the way women's lives and I think this is where the second point is and how is this to be done and the focus is so far is been on micro finance has been on self-help groups has been on scaling things which are at very subsistence levels they've been at at you know little like little little livelihoods here and there you know with little bits of money that women can Ghana now this is this is good it provides scale it it covers large parts of the country but where do we go from here so that debate of where you go beyond this is still waiting to be discussed it's not actually out there either in the policy way yes it's in bits and pieces as in snippets and we have somebody here who's talking about skills but I must say NSDC and everything nobody's talking about it and it won't be through the internet it will not be necessarily through technology it will not necessarily be through all of this because they're large parts of tribal India etc which will not actually be reached in this fashion it really requires human to human interaction and it requires people focused skills based on local resources and livelihoods which can be taken through value chains thank you there's a question here can I and then gentlemen here can I request you to actually raise a question rather than having a statement of your own yes please yeah the lady there on the edge and the two gentlemen here and then I'll get back to the panelists my name is Aparajita Gogo and I work for a non-profit called set by India and my question is specifically around the missing women in our workforce in our economy and specifically honorable minister you spoke about the Sabla scheme which promises promises girls livelihoods life skills and nutrition we have been trying to help make the scheme a reality and we haven't been able to find vocational training agencies who would actually go into the villages and train adolescent girls and since this is the forum of people from the corporate sector I would like to ask you what is actually stopping us from investing in actually providing livelihood skills to girls who are living within constraints these are girls who cannot travel to the district headquarters for training so can we take the skills to their villages can we think of appropriate skills which are for the girls with restrained mobility but not enough security for them to step outside where we need to change mindsets so is there any way we can look at this problem thank you yes please whenever I go to any part of India in any village and if I have a dialogue with women first issue the first ranking issue they name is issue of alcohol and alcoholic men whether their father where husband where their sons but this is their biggest problem and that is one reason why women disappear from the social arena after six o'clock in the evening they cannot come out they are not safe chavi I am sure she would you would bear me out that in a meeting in a village if there is a one drunk man he can make any participation of women impossible now the problem is and why I am mentioning this issue here that alcohol is looked at as an growth issue economic issue men in Maharashtra alone are drinking alcohol worth three trillion rupees per year sorry can I just get you to get to the point yes my point is women participation in the social and political field versus economic growth of alcohol industry how do you reconcile okay yes and then we'll get back to the time yeah I'm on sugar I had amdox which is an IT company I think one of the powerful things I heard about was from chubby and I want to ask this question to her she talked about the value addition value addition in terms of how to raise the level of a woman where men see a value keep aside the negative connotation of the value from the woman so can you share some ideas that you've got on how that can happen and what you are seeing in the village that you are leading good thanks very much so let me now take those four questions and come back to the panel and I think chubby maybe you can start off and also maybe build in what I had asked you about the status of women how you see it changing and then I'll ask Rajan to talk a bit about the use of technology and Madam Minister if you could talk a bit about the question here about okay please multiple points here that I like to address first and foremost I believe yes the larger population India continues to remain in rural India and therefore we need to it's about time we woke up it's been so many years and we haven't done enough and I feel first and foremost we need to take care of the very basics when a human being is unable to receive his supply of safe drinking water is unable to get a roof over his head is unable to have food be available to him on daily basis there are got to be frustrations there will be points when he he or she would want to release those and by and large men get frustrated alcoholism begins because they need a release to that frustration and by and large human nature when you when you see that release coming out you will always suppress the weaker and that is usually the women and the children so unless until we do not provide for the basics that issue will continue to remain in our country for the longest time ever and I think that needs to be addressed in a big way and we have multiple players multiple stakeholders who can help in a big way provided we learn to start thinking out of the box realize that villages are huge opportunities you just need to think a little differently find you know a little bit and there's huge scope in not just providing training to the people there but also finding means to a lot of different varieties of things that you can do in villages as well going back to what madam minister said about the quota system I have to disagree yes we need quota in 65 years women have not had the kind of representation that mean that we need and something needs to be done and quota perhaps is the best way forward which we have seen in the numbers of people women who have come forward but that does not mean you have empowered them unless until we do not educate and provide the training for these women including me to figure out what the laws of the land is how you function as an elected representative what is it you can do if there are any hindrances how do you work around it but if you don't have that and by and large in villages I'm sure most of you who know would agree that even a tenure of five years by the time you figure out how to work around things by the time you figure out what schemes exist your tenure is it is over and that the development which could have been visible is not visible going back to so I think that kind of addresses Mr Abhay's question secondly what Anju asked and as well as Mr Nag what you said the value addition in my village alone you'd be surprised and what is really amazing and overwhelming is the fact that you actually don't need to do very much or needed to provide is a little bit of moral support a little take some time out to discuss things with people in the village be it the men and the women it again is very important that we also sensitize men because unless until you don't do that there is no way by empowering women you will actually be able to improve the status of the women men have to be sensitized and I think it also needs to begin at a very early early stage in within families when we stop compartmentalizing and and discriminating a certain job as being fit only for women or only for men that I think needs to happen which used to happen if you look at ancient India all of that existed women and men were at par but the invasions as we know things changed and that has kind of sort of gotten ingrained in our system so deep that seems difficult we have systems which are working but it's not visible because of the higher population that exists so there is visibility the kind of things we have to ask you to now wrap up oh sure I'll wrap up with the things we have done in my village on day one my team when we got elected only men turned up for the meeting when asked for the women where they said well we are here and I said please send your women and I guarantee them I said I want the women to learn to read and if they do not educated bring their husband sons daughter whoever to read the documents and then sign it and just by giving them that faith I think they had the confidence enough in me to let the women work with me from morning till night even if it meant as late as 10 p.m. I had on second day one of the husbands called me up and say hey you guys carry on please let my women know my wife know not to worry because I will cook today and that was on just day two and that's what I mean very small things can actually take you to great horizons in Bihar I don't know how many of you know I'll have to now cut you off last example last example okay you keep it for your wrap up Rajendra 30 seconds on the issue of technology again so I guess on skills some experiences in the little villages of Delhi where young girls who are otherwise not permitted like Tughla Ghabar we're getting them trained and getting jobs in the retail sector now again this is urban or rural or whatever but the ability to take a child give them skills get them to become self-sufficient very good evidence of that want to couple that with the fact that India is going to put broadband broadband to every panchayat in the foreseeable future so the pipe will be there then if the girls can be brought to the panchayat then they have all the knowledge and skills which are required that's a possibility evidence in metros is done now we have to make it happen thank you madam minister um Naq ji this is what he said about him I want to talk about him please sabla ok he said that sabla adolescent girls to give skill education sabla only benefit is that as many of our villages where we started sabla all over india in the number of lakhs sabla came out and they changed their mindset they changed and they went to one to one and told them about empowering their women around their home self-help group bane it's ke sad wo humare ahinsa messenger ke tara humne us kia dousa ek jyobhi bataya ay no ne I disagree with this reservation I think agar reservation nahi hota to humara panchayati raj meh mahi lain nahi nikal kya sakti one time they can depend on their husbands but next time they will not depend on their husbands they will come themselves alone and will say that we have done well there is no need for husbands we have gone to know we can do because this training our enemy wb national mission empowerment of women they are giving training village to village jacket training and just like I said that a training we did in Pali in Tirajistan after that in Kamroop in Asam in Jharkhand bhaah saari asa roti sa mein ye training se mahi laun ko aage labh mila hain bhaar nikal ke aayin dousa jo self-help group banaate hain unko economically empowerment karne ke liye agar wo economically empowerment hai to socially or politically empowerment automatically hoja this is a good point chabi you wanted to come in for a moment to ma'am I did not say that reservation is not good what I meant is that with reservation is also important to empower women in the true sense provide them the education so the issues empower reservations are necessary but not a sufficient condition absolutely okay let me go back to the audience for last round of questions and then I'll get back to the panel is there ah yes please yeah hi my name is Megha Bari I'm a reporter with the Wall Street Journal my question is for Mr. Pawar Mr. Pawar Indian IT huge success story one of the more progressive sectors of this country 40% women that's great how many women in your sector our CEOs every company that I speak with and I speak to all of them practically these are big ones they push forward their HR head saying look we have a woman here I think Vipro has a new female CMO but I don't know how many others do when are we going to see a female CEO instead of just men so yeah yeah so let me answer that women are smarter than men and they know there's an awful job to be a CEO but but but but but let me say this let me say this let me say this it's a it's a stereotype in your mind that the top job is the best first of all it's certainly the best way let me also so let me also say this yes let me also say this flow now yeah let me say this that women are also are coming into into the into the corporate world in very small numbers we now in our industry very large finance sector they came ahead of the IT sector and you can see a very large number of women CEOs in the finance in the banking sector that's visible I think there's data available you can look at at this point ICICI look at access bank look at HDFC so even in our sector women the average if I were to take the average age of the men in the IT sector and the women I would say that that will be lower because they're coming in later you have to give them time and I think it's going to happen it's a matter of time but many of the women who've chosen to get to a certain level and balance their life because it's a fact I think this is something which we have to confront that women have to do more in the home or are expected to are expected to do more in the home like rearing children bringing them up fair and unfair is a different question but that's a harsh reality we have to confront that and many of them are making choices we have women who are earning more than the CEO mind you but they've chosen to balance work in a different way now good or bad is not what I'm trying to say this is a this is a reality there but if I look at the financial sector which has had at least 10 or 15 years more of experience I think our sector will show a similar level coming forward in the US we've seen examples already thanks Roger but okay I've got lots of questions now I'll have to now get us in the audience participation as well okay I'll take only the three hands which are up starting with the lady there and the two hands I saw here and I'll make a consention for you sir and get you included as well four questions from the floor and then we'll come back to the panel okay please keep them short and specific yeah I'm Shweta Poonja right with the business today magazine Mr Pawar my question is for you yes there are more and more women entering the workforce but are Indian companies creating an ecosystem for women to move forward because we do see a lot of women falling out of the workforce after their first pregnancy or after they start a family because organizations are not geared to provide them with the right platform so that they can have the right balance in their life like you rightly pointed out that they have responsibilities at home yet they're also talented so our Indian companies moving towards flexible work solutions which would really address both those issues okay thank you okay no Raju later okay yeah please hi my name is Chandramali just to take a medical analogy you know what we are discussing is symptoms which is female fetishite or poor representation and workforce and so on so forth I really wonder what is the disease and are we tackling the disease okay hi myself Nibras global shape representing Bangalore hub my question is specifically related to the red light areas and red street are we doing something in India like what we are doing in Nepal to save those missing women from their homes because I believe that our sisters and mothers are not deserved to be treated like that thanks okay and the last question here my name is Kumar couple of questions one of course the question is how do you find those women who want to be leaders and who really want to you know lead lead lead that chain because we we employ we have a company we don't find women women to work for us we don't we find it difficult to find women leaders even as HR leaders at that point at that point in India and it's big big question so I don't know really how to find those women who can be leaders who want to really bring the work lift balance you know it's one question I had a question for you Rajat because you come from the Philippines but you've got a lot of women working and also there's really a lot of missing women because on the other hand you have a challenge over there of a different dimension unlike India where you have single moms because there is no abortion you know because of country being Catholic here you got missing women in India because you don't you have abortions and therefore those women are not born maybe there is two different dimensions to look at just wanted to check with you okay I knew this audience even though it is sorry no more question I've got to bring a guillotine down otherwise we'll not finish I'm sorry okay that's okay no just a bit just a bit I think it's to be now no no I think I think to be to be fair everybody everybody must have a right it must everybody must have a right to speak I think that's why we're here and that's your opinion and you know I think that must be respected you know that's okay that's okay I think you're all welcome to an opinion I think we must respect the view that anybody can express I don't think we should get excited beyond that I might feel like you did but I don't think that's the issue let me say that I know this is a very very sensitive very very important issue that we're discussing it I don't think we'll solve all of it in 90 minutes that we have got what I will do is request the panel to take some of the questions some of them I don't think quite frankly can be or should be discussed with the time that we have let me take a question about what is the disease I think I'll ask Malika to respond to that I think the disease is that we are blind to understanding that the disease is an epidemic until this country understands that it's not the GDP that matters it's not how many steel mills you make that matter what matters first and the country will never get healthy is unless you tackle the disease of what each and every person thinks of a woman I think this is what is important good good it's absolutely crucial so that has to be tackled first the government has a national rural mission it has a this mission it has a that mission but not a single person from any of the many many parties has taken up this issue gone on national television and said our women are being destroyed half of our population is being destroyed we need to put all our thinking into what to do okay there were some questions really which were more specific about HR leaders again I don't want to bring Rajendra again because I think I said his piece but I would say that it is incumbent on the corporate leaders to find them I don't think you know you'll just get women leaders and you say okay I'm appointing it you've got to make that effort much more sincerely much more diligently than you have and it has to start at a very very early stage when the pipeline of professionals that Rajendra was talking about has to be built so it's a long drawn process but I think the industry will have to step up to the plate they just won't happen and you just won't say I've appointed my token you know HR or CEO or or CFO I think given the time that I don't have I will now request the panel 30 second sound bite what have you taken away and what do we do from here where do we go from and I start with Malika and then go in that order Malika 30 seconds sound bite the corporate world because it's represented most here needs to understand that when they take women for what they are and with everything that they have they are not doing anybody a favor except themselves okay I would I would like to request everybody present here until and unless you think of your daughter standing in the place of the survivor who has gone through all this if you don't take as your daughter nothing is going to happen as Malika said all the political parties have in their agenda about women and children but nobody is doing anything they are just talking and I also request you let's take each child as your own child and you will see this world a better world thank you please we all need to work collectively to improve the status of women in the society and break the stereotypical image of the culture this is right jasmine I think I've seen that there's lots of solutions out there each one on its own won't work all of them together will work the real question in my mind is is there sufficient will is this really recognized as the major problem that it is glad to see the rooms filled up a bit but I'm feeling that that's probably the key issue is to build sufficient will to put in place at scale these solutions that we know are out there thank you jasmine uh chubby um I'm just going to resonate the fact that we have to understand that it is an uncomfortable truth but we have to wake up to it and we have to sensitize men specifically and empower women with education and along with that the value addition I'm going to reiterate that again it's extremely important because unless until we do not provide them employment opportunities there's no way we'll be empowering that one individual and if we empower them the very cliche term you'll be empowering the family and the communities as well quick example as mentioned earlier we it's taken me three years to find a trainer to come into my village to train the women on small initiatives such as tailoring grinding of spices grinding of pulses but that in itself has empowered these women and we're now holding small exhibits and trying to find markets to sell their products but that's that's a simple way that's another simple way wherein which has been done in in a in small villages villages in Rajasthan and especially in Bihar where when a girl child is born she's welcomed into the society and the family is gifted 10 saplings of fruit-bearing trees and that fruit-bearing tree is what provides the asset value to the child and helps her through the education and later on in life she's the owner of the fruits which which would come out of those trees I think small initiators like that as well and the support from the society from each one of us who's seated here can actually help resolve our issue it will not happen day not in two days it is going to be a long-run process but we need to start and take it seriously thank you Raju sir I think the recognition that this is a very very deep rooted issue to be addressed I think that comes forth far more strongly it's not for the first time but comes forth so from my point of view there is work to be done immediately with people that I interact with and perhaps we far more conscious and take conscious decisions but the other thing for impact I think the opportunity that a connected community with technology with powerful devices and the empowerment that that can give I think that's something I'm more interested to study and understand and with broadband going to the village the possibility that it can do to liberate women I think there's a whole lot of opportunity there so I'm personally more and more committed to see what's the science that can make it happen thank you very much uh it would be uh impossible for me and probably even foolish if I try to capture this rich discussion in just a couple of sentences so what I will do is echo a statement a sentiment expressed by several particularly by Malika that India I believe is at a crossroad India is if the present economic growth projections were to be believed give or take a bit would become an economic superpower overtake Japan even as the third largest economy perhaps in the next 15 20 years but that entire growth story will come totally unhinged I believe if we do not deal with this whole issue of marginalizing and not fully utilizing the potential of the women and if we don't let them be born if we don't let them live then obviously you're not ever going to do that so I think the challenge that India faces and challenge that I think not only India many countries in the world face is a very serious one but I think all of us together just have to deal with it because that's a question of our survival as a nation and as a community of people I'd like to thank the panel for excellent statements interventions I'd like to thank the audience for a very excited and passionate participation my apologies if I haven't let you all participate as fully but I can tell you that I've been fair to you because I've also guillotined the panel but on that note may I request a big applause for everybody audience and the panel