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Gender equity: Incremental GDP 2025 in full potential scenario A recently-released  study  by one of the world’s most prestigious consultants, McKinsey Global Institute (MGI), has estimated that women in India contribute just 17 percent to the Gross National Product (GDP) as against 37 percent global average, as a result of which the country is losing out 1.4 per cent in terms of annual GDP growth. The study says that, if India were to achieve its “full potential” of gender equity, the country could add an annual GDP to the tune of $2.9 trillion by 2025, which is 60 percent higher compared to what it calls "business-as-usual case."

  Gujarat ranks tenth among 21 major Indian states in top consultants McKinsey Global Institute’s (MGI’s) new Female Empowerment Index (Femdex), released recently. A decade ago, a United National Development Programme (UNDP)-sponsored  report , released by the Ministry of Woman and Child, Government of India, came up with an almost ranking, putting Gujarat as an average state in what it called Gender Development Index (GDI).

Hardik Patel The New York-based Human Rights Watch (HRW) has taken strong exception to the Gujarat government using “overbroad and vaguely worded sedition, criminal defamation, and hate speech laws” for “arresting Hardik Patel, who is spearheading protests to demand quotas in education and government jobs for his community, and charged him with sedition in two separate cases.”

  Yet another attempt is underway by circles close to the Narendra Modi government for “rewriting” the history of India’s freedom struggle, and this time the target is Mahatma Gandhi. The question has already been posed: Who brought independence, Mahatma Gandhi or Subhas Chandra Bose?

Survivors pay homage to those killed at Naroda Patiya Although 32 accused – including a minister in the Modi government – were in 2012 found guilty of “murder, attempted murder, conspiracy, spreading enmity and communal hatred” during the 2002 Gujarat communal violence in Ahmedabad’s Naroda Patiya area, so far, just in one case there has been conviction for gruesome acts of sexual violence there, regrets a new  American study .

  In a shocking revelation that is likely to create a major ripple among India’s top Dalit rights activists, the Government of India has published Collected Works of Bhimrao Ambedkar (CWBA) in Hindi without 11 of Ambedkar’s books, including two which are considered his ideologically significant works, “Annihilation of Caste” and “Riddles of Hinduism.”

Top nations attracting porn sites Adult website Pornhub, one of the many pornographic sites, which were sought to be banned by the Government of India in August 2015 through an order of the Department of Telecom, has claimed that India has the world’s third largest population viewing pornography, next only to the United States and the United Kingdom.

  A high-profile study, “India Health Report: Nutrition 2015”, released last month, has found that “developed” Gujarat lags behind most major Indian states in child nutrition status. Quoting latest Government of India figures, the study says that 33.5 per cent of under-five children are underweight, which is the seventh worst among 20 major Indian states.

  A new study on risk factors for chronic undernutrition among children says that India’s policy makers have disproportionately focused on “what can be termed ‘nutrition-specific’ interventions targeted at addressing the immediate causes of undernutrition”, and considerably less emphasis on “social and structural factors, including poverty reduction, improvements to socioeconomic status and maternal education.”

Gujarat’s former topcop RB Sreekumar in his  new book , “Gujarat Behind the Curtain” has said that director-general of police (DGP) K Chakravarthy had told him how chief minister Narendra Modi had told officers in a meeting on the previous day evening not to take any action against rampaging crowd on February 28, 2002, the second day of the communal riots in Gujarat. Sreekumar says, according to Chakravarty, Modi told the meeting, “In communal riots, police normally takes action against Hindus and Muslims on one-to-one proportion, this will not do now, allow Hindus to give vent to their anger.”