India joins hands with Condoleeza Rice, 32 nations

About 40 women leaders across the globe will empower women at the grassroots, reports Chetan Chauhan.

Updated on: Sep 28, 2007, 21:17:12 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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India on Friday joined the top 32 women nations of the world with its initiative on gender budgeting and women empowerment at grassroots levels getting special appreciation at a meeting called by US Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice.

Participating for the first time at the Women Leaders’ Working Group, Women and Child Development Minister Renuka Chowdhury elaborated on steps taken by India for empowering women and spoke about new initiatives like law against domestic violence and setting up self help groups to empower women. “My effort was to negate India’s image of a country of dowry deaths and female feticide,” Chowdhury told HT from New York.

The working group consists of about 40 women leaders from around the globe including heads of the states. The meeting was held on the margins of UN General Assembly at New Work on the theme of the “Progress on Women’s Empowerment”.

Chowdhury also spoke about the success of gender budgeting and its overall impact in implementation of government policies, while pointing out at micro and macro level policies for women in India. “India has done for women what many developed nations has failed to do,” she said and added, “India is moving towards becoming a powerful women based economy”.

However, she admitted of numerous challenges being faced by Indian women because of traditional hurdles. The government is making its effort along with the civil society, she said.

India was specially mentioned by Libya and Nepal for its success in women empowerment. Libyan representative made a special mention of 32 women battalions of Central Reserve Police Force there and said the women battalions were doing a ‘great job’. Nepal representative told the group about how Indian women are making fast strides in all walks of life.

The meeting ended with a decision that all 32 countries will chalk out a global programme for empowerment of women before the next meeting.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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