New Delhi, February 21 (HS): Vice President Dr. Jagdeep Dhankhar said today that gender participation in governance is fundamental to bring equality and reduce inequalities. India is perhaps the only country in the world that has constitutionally structured participation of women in governance. The Vice President was addressing the delegates at the conference of the African-Asian Rural Development Organization here.
The Vice President said that one-third of the seats have been reserved for women in the village and municipality. Regarding women empowerment, he said that the government has taken initiatives to empower women at all levels from Panchayat. He said that lakhs of women are continuously being elected through the election process at the levels of Panchayat, cooperatives etc. They are facing the challenges of governance at the Gram Panchayat and district level. Elections have been strengthened in the Constitution. It is a legal framework for the functioning of various democratic institutions, in which women's participation has been given priority.
VP Dhankhar said ,In the country of 1.5 billion people, every sector has seen extensive changes in the last decade. These include education, economy and other basic immunity providing sectors like internet, electricity, cockpit gas and toilets etc. Large scale transformational steps have been taken by the government through two aspects, which have helped the country a lot and benefited the people a lot. One of these is education and the other is people's empowerment. When it comes to internet usage per capita, India is ahead of America and China. He said that when it comes to formalization or digital transfer of the economy, we are more than 50 percent of the global communities. A decade ago our economy was only in double digits in global benchmarks and now we are at the fifth position in the world and are moving towards becoming the third economic power of the world in the next two years.
He said that our nation is aiming to become a developed nation by 2047. There was a time when our country had to deposit gold in Swiss banks to maintain its financial credibility, at that time the foreign exchange reserves were only 11 billion US dollars. If it is compared with the current situation, it has become 7 hundred billion US dollars. He said that India is an example for the world that what impact can be had by good initiatives in the field of rural development, empowerment of people etc. This convergence is an important milestone which will take the nation to new heights.
The Vice President said that this conference of the African-Asian Rural Development Organization will play an important role in defining the stability of the world. If the stability of the world is to be defined then the development of rural sector, agriculture and corporate sector etc. is most important. The world is facing challenges for its safe existence. Pointing to climate change, Dhankhar said that this is a threat which we have created by indiscriminate exploitation of natural resources, which we do not own. He said that we thought that this planet is only for humans, not for others but apart from this there are many challenges, including hunger and poverty.
Hindusthan Samachar / Jun Sarkar
