India's 48% women victims of partner violence, it ranks 131 of 153 nations in gender index, worst in BRICS

By Jag Jivan
A fresh report jointly prepared by two of the world’s best known institutes, the Georgetown University’s Institute for Women, Peace and Security (Washington), and the Peace Research Institute (Oslo), has ranked India a poor 131st in its Women Peace and Security (WPS) Index among 153 countries for 2017-18, worse than other competing BRICS (short form for Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) countries, on one hand, and all of India’s neighbours, except Pakistan, on the other.
Measuring WPS index on a scale one 1, the report says, “Overall, the index values range from a high of .886 for Iceland, which leads the world in this first edition of the WPS Index, down to .385 for Afghanistan and Syria, the bottom ranked countries in a tie for last place.”
India’s WPS Index is .580, as against the global average of .662.
Suggesting a huge gap between India’s economic development and gender security, the report says that the country’s the WPS index rank is 27 per cent less than the per capita Gross Domestic Product (GDP) rank.
Giving a detailed account of the WPS ranking and the reason why India ranks so poor compared to peer countries as well as neighours, the data provided by the report show that a whopping 47.7% of women experience lifetime intimate partner violence.
Other figures of equal significance, released by the report, include the mean year schooling of women in the age group 25+ being 5.4, financial inclusion touching 42.6% of women aged 15+, 25% of men aged 15+ agree that it is unacceptable for women to work, and just 29.4% of 25+ women are employed.

Comments the report, “High levels of gender inequality manifested in son bias”, adding, data on India and China are particularly linked to “their unbalanced sex ratios and the likelihood of conflict.” It cites studies to say, “Youth population bulges in India over 1956–2002 are associated with higher levels of armed conflict, political violence, and Hindu-Muslim riots.”
Azerbaijan and China top the list of 10 countries with the worst son bias, with 116 boys born for every 100 girls, followed by Armenia (114), Viet Nam (112), India and Georgia (111), the Maldives (110), Pakistan (109), and Albania and Papua New Guinea (108).
The report says, “Given the combination of adverse sex ratios and large population size, China (5 million missing girls) and India (4 million) account for the vast majority over the five-year period, followed by Pakistan, Viet Nam, Nigeria, and Egypt”, adding, “Beyond this five year period, the aggregate numbers of missing girls are obviously much larger – estimated on the order of about 66 million in China, for example.”

Regretting that “many countries have not criminalized marital rape, 103 according to the World Bank’s Women, Business, and the Law”, the report says, “Provisions criminalizing marital rape are more common in Latin America and the Caribbean and in countries in the Developed Country group”, but regrets, “No countries in the Middle East criminalize marital rape. In Sri Lanka, marital rape is recognized as a crime only when the spouses are judicially separated.”
As for India, it insists, the country “criminalizes marital rape only when the wife is younger than 15, and Bangladesh does so only when the wife is younger than 13.”

Comments

Plastic burning in homes threatens food, water and air across Global South: Study

By Jag Jivan In a groundbreaking study spanning 26 countries across the Global South , researchers have uncovered the widespread and concerning practice of households burning plastic waste as a fuel for cooking, heating, and other domestic needs. The research, published in Nature Communications , reveals that this hazardous method of managing both waste and energy poverty is driven by systemic failures in municipal services and the unaffordability of clean alternatives, posing severe risks to human health and the environment.

From protest to proof: Why civil society must rethink environmental resistance

By Shankar Sharma* As concerned environmentalists and informed citizens, many of us share deep unease about the way environmental governance in our country is being managed—or mismanaged. Our complaints range across sectors and regions, and most of them are legitimate. Yet a hard question confronts us: are complaints, by themselves, effective? Experience suggests they are not.

From colonial mercantilism to Hindutva: New book on the making of power in Gujarat

By Rajiv Shah Professor Ghanshyam Shah ’s latest book, “ Caste-Class Hegemony and State Power: A Study of Gujarat Politics ”, published by Routledge , is penned by one of Gujarat ’s most respected chroniclers, drawing on decades of fieldwork in the state. It seeks to dissect how caste and class factors overlap to perpetuate the hegemony of upper strata in an ostensibly democratic polity. The book probes the dominance of two main political parties in Gujarat—the Indian National Congress and the BJP—arguing that both have sustained capitalist growth while reinforcing Brahmanic hierarchies.

Economic superpower’s social failure? Inequality, malnutrition and crisis of India's democracy

By Vikas Meshram India may be celebrated as one of the world’s fastest-growing economies, but a closer look at who benefits from that growth tells a starkly different story. The recently released World Inequality Report 2026 lays bare a country sharply divided by wealth, privilege and power. According to the report, nearly 65 percent of India’s total wealth is owned by the richest 10 percent of its population, while the bottom half of the country controls barely 6.4 percent. The top one percent—around 14 million people—holds more than 40 percent, the highest concentration since 1961. Meanwhile, the female labour force participation rate is a dismal 15.7 percent.

Urgent need to study cause of large number of natural deaths in Gulf countries

By Venkatesh Nayak* According to data tabled in Parliament in April 2018, there are 87.76 lakh (8.77 million) Indians in six Gulf countries, namely Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE). While replying to an Unstarred Question (#6091) raised in the Lok Sabha, the Union Minister of State for External Affairs said, during the first half of this financial year alone (between April-September 2018), blue-collared Indian workers in these countries had remitted USD 33.47 Billion back home. Not much is known about the human cost of such earnings which swell up the country’s forex reserves quietly. My recent RTI intervention and research of proceedings in Parliament has revealed that between 2012 and mid-2018 more than 24,570 Indian Workers died in these Gulf countries. This works out to an average of more than 10 deaths per day. For every US$ 1 Billion they remitted to India during the same period there were at least 117 deaths of Indian Workers in Gulf ...

Kolkata event marks 100 years since first Communist conference in India

By Harsh Thakor* A public assembly was held in Kolkata on December 24, 2025, to mark the centenary of the First Communist Conference in India , originally convened in Kanpur from December 26 to 28, 1925. The programme was organised by CPI (ML) New Democracy at Subodh Mallik Square on Lenin Sarani. According to the organisers, around 2,000 people attended the assembly.

Celebrating 125 yr old legacy of healthcare work of missionaries

Vilas Shende, director, Mure Memorial Hospital By Moin Qazi* Central India has been one of the most fertile belts for several unique experiments undertaken by missionaries in the field of education and healthcare. The result is a network of several well-known schools, colleges and hospitals that have woven themselves into the social landscape of the region. They have also become a byword for quality and affordable services delivered to all sections of the society. These institutions are characterised by committed and compassionate staff driven by the selfless pursuit of improving the well-being of society. This is the reason why the region has nursed and nurtured so many eminent people who occupy high positions in varied fields across the country as well as beyond. One of the fruits of this legacy is a more than century old iconic hospital that nestles in the heart of Nagpur city. Named as Mure Memorial Hospital after a British warrior who lost his life in a war while defending his cou...

The architect of Congolese liberation: The life and legacy of Patrice Lumumba

By Harsh Thakor* Patrice Émery Lumumba remains a central figure in the history of African decolonization, serving as the first Prime Minister of the independent Republic of the Congo. Born on July 2, 1925, Lumumba emerged as a radical anti-colonial leader who sought to unify a nation fractured by decades of Belgian rule. His tenure, however, lasted less than seven months before his dismissal and subsequent assassination on January 17, 1961.

Epic war against caste system is constitutional responsibility of elected government

Edited by well-known Gujarat Dalit rights leader Martin Macwan, the book, “Bhed-Bharat: An Account of Injustice and Atrocities on Dalits and Adivasis (2014-18)” (available in English and Gujarati*) is a selection of news articles on Dalits and Adivasis (2014-2018) published by Dalit Shakti Prakashan, Ahmedabad. Preface to the book, in which Macwan seeks to answer key questions on why the book is needed today: *** The thought of compiling a book on atrocities on Dalits and thus present an overall Indian picture had occurred to me a long time ago. Absence of such a comprehensive picture is a major reason for a weak social and political consciousness among Dalits as well as non-Dalits. But gradually the idea took a different form. I found that lay readers don’t understand numbers and don’t like to read well-researched articles. The best way to reach out to them was storytelling. As I started writing in Gujarati and sharing the idea of the book with my friends, it occurred to me that while...

Search This Blog