Most well-off Central Delhi is most unsafe for women

India’s most economically and socially well-off districts are among the most insecure places for women to live, reveals a study released on Wednesday.

Updated on: Jun 2, 2010, 23:19:46 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

Prefer HTon Google

Share via

Copy link

India’s most economically and socially well-off districts are among the most insecure places for women to live, reveals a study released on Wednesday.

One such district is the Capital’s business hub —Central Delhi — rated ‘best’ on the Well Being Index (WBI) and ‘worst’ on the Female Security Index (FSI) in India, in a first such comparison over a majority of districts in India.

Some prosperous urban centres such as Mumbai and Chandigarh have high well-being rating but fare poorly on the FSI.

The study by Tata Strategic Management Group derives its rankings by superimposing economists Joseph Stiglitz and Amartya Sen’s well-being definition on National Sample Survey’s expenditure date on health, education, transport and food for the year 2006-07. For FSI, gender ratio and crime against women data has been considered.

“Some of the most well-off parts of India (Punjab, Haryana, Delhi and Western Uttar Pradesh) have the worst ratings in terms of the female security index,” the study said.

These states also have the most skewed sex ratio.

The study indicated poverty has nothing to do with gender discrimination.

The states rated worst or bad on WBI such as Orissa, West Bengal, Jharkhand and Chattisgarh have very good FSI rating.

“Discrimination against women is a trend more visible in rich northern Indian states,” said Raju Bhinge, chief executive of the group, in the study.

Identifying a clear divide on female safety, the study said most of northern Indian states have worst FSI ranking whereas peninsular India and parts of eastern India have been rated as one of the best.

However, Delhi has also been rated as one of the most insecure cities for women in India with seven of its nine districts rated as ‘worst’ on FSI.

The district-level WBI index indicates huge disparity among districts within a state even though northern Indian states are better than the rest of India, the study said.

For instance in Karnataka, Bangalore has got best rating on the WBI but Bellary, a rich mining area and Gulbarga, have been rated as bad.

“The findings show that the planners need to look at relevant indicators at the district level for effective action for providing a better life to all citizens,” the study said.

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

Get the latest India News, breaking headlines and real-time updates from across the country. Stay informed about politics, government policies, crime, weather and major national developments.