Women perspective of looking at world is different from men. This is a proven fact that women demonstrate prowess at resolving conflicts and with compassion. These are some of key traits which make woman a natural leader. Unfortunately for so long they are not being provided with a level playing field and we at Foresight looking at creating enabling environment where women can be the change maker.
India has set ambitious target of making a 5 trillion economy and apart from govt policy framework for growth, the major driving factor for this target is demographic dividend as a young nation of 130 billion people. The GOI has started campaign like Atmanirbhar Bharat and vocal for local and it has got attention of young population. One important and most critical factor which is being missed in the whole idea of capitalizing the demographic dividend, the participation of 50% of population in productive workforce is very low. Women constitute 50% population (part of calculation of demographic dividend) but their participation in workforce is about 20% which is far below not only as compare to developed economies but also below the developing economies like Bangladesh. Irony is that as per all India survey of higher education findings, women share in higher education is continuously increasing and reached to 49% in 2018-19 which slightly higher than men.
Economic empowerment and financial independence is the key to gender equality and poor participation of women in meaningful and gainful employment is biggest barrier. This large chunk of women missing from workforce and further declining in rural as well as in urban areas should be reason of concern for policy makers and society at large.
The below declining chart should be disturbing for country looking to become one the biggest economy of the world
The above facts and case are the driving force for emergence of the idea of “SHE THE CHANGE”, here at Foresight. AatmaNirbhar Bharat Abhiyan will remain a dream if we do not change the dynamics at workplaces and bring our 50% population to get involved in productive work. SHE THE CHANGE is a program to work on the goals leads to substantial increase in participation of women in productive workforce. The idea is to make it a movement in Metro cities, cities and in villages to aware community at large so that it becomes a national mission and create an environment which will provide equal opportunities to women to make their independent choices about their careers.
Following programs are planned to take up under our vision 2025:
National campaign to spread awareness about women participation in workforce including startup ecosystem and seats in the board of corporates. To make it a movement, we resolve to conduct workshops, symposium and seminars in Academic institutions, PRIs at block level, Women bodies of business chambers, Professional Institutions and political parties.
Youth conclaves dedicated to the cause of She the Change
Engaging with policy makers to bring polices and campaigns to support the cause
To set up SHE THE CHANGE award for women entrepreneurs
To promote women entrepreneurship through startup ecosystem and promoting women led producers’ groups in new cooperative governance system
GLAD is inspired by the idea of AatmaNirbhar Bharat to make India self-reliant in every aspect. During the corona pandemic, it was seen that in the time of deep crises, a nation’s resilience and capabilities are the keys to sail through the crises. India is country with unique demography where without Rural & Tribal India, dream of a developed nation will always remain a dream. We at Foresight strongly believe in this approach and has been working at block level on micro idea of PURA (Provision of Urban Amenities in Rural Areas). The idea of GLAD is furtherance of same model with a different approach by primarily focusing on promoting entrepreneurial spirit of Rural & Tribal Bharat. The developmental model in rural India, Gandhi model of Gram Swaraj remain relevant which promote Community Driven Models including promoting of Cooperatives.
To accelerate the speed, primary focus would be on Agriculture & Entrepreneurship.
Agriculture has been seen as a loss-making profession for long in India but the present policies and better awareness among rural folk, making it possible to look at it with a different perspective. We strongly believe that by educating rural youth about sustainable agriculture with market linkage, this sector can be turned to a profit-making sector. Primary focus would be on:
Enabling and promoting the Indian way of agriculture by using technology as enabler
Promoting natural way of agriculture by bringing soil health at core
Promoting farmer producers organizations (FPOs) to address the issue of labour and maintaining supply chain
Enabling market linkages
The idea of AatmaNirbhar Bharat and vocal for local have potential to bring India as most stable and strong economic power but path of success goes through rural India. India will have to promote rural entrepreneurship to capitalize upon demographic dividends. Rural Entrepreneurship can revolutionize the rural economy including accelerating the revival of agriculture sector. Recently in pandemic time, world is looking at rural economy with a better and improved understanding. We at Foresight are committed to work to promote & foster rural entrepreneurship