President into gender governance

The President called officials from the various ministries to know what the government was doing on gender issues, reports Chetan Chauhan.

Updated on: Feb 17, 2008, 03:10:02 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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Rashtrapati Bhawan has now moved from e-governance to gender governance. APJ Abdul Kalam had gone all out for better people-government interface using technology through different e-governance modules. And now President Pratibha Devisingh Patil has embarked upon the gender parity agenda for the government.

The President called officials from the Women and Child Development ministry, Rural Development ministry, Human Resources Development ministry and Agriculture ministry to know what the government was doing on gender issues.

Sources in the government told the Hindustan Times that the President was keen to know how the government was ensuring that gender parity was achieved in government schemes. "It was a kind of briefing taken by the President," a senior government official said.

Patil wanted to know more about the actual impact of the government policies for women on the beneficiaries. Although government officials presented a slew of figures based on different studies the President wanted a more concerted effort, a senior WCD ministry official said.

The WCD ministry informed that 52 ministries have set up gender budget cells but still the allocation for women is not enough. The president was informed that a review of all laws related to women was underway to make them more gender sensitive.

The HRD ministry officials spoke about special schemes and incentives to bridge the enrolment gap between boys and girls. They also told the President about the improvement of the girl child in primary education since the launch of Sarva Siksha Abhiyan.

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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