India up 21 places in WEF gender gap report

India has climbed 21 spots to rank 87th on the World Economic Forum's Global Gender Gap Report 2016. In 2015, it was ranked 108th. The improvement in ranking, the report says, is driven largely by major improvements in education, where it has managed to close its gap entirely in primary and secondary education. With this jump in ranking, India has now overtaken China which is ranked 99th out of 144 countries. Iceland tops the latest rankings followed by Finland, Norway and Sweden.

The report measures gender gap as progress towards parity between men and women in four areas - educational attainment, health and survival, economic opportunity and political empowerment.

A troubling finding of the report is that the global march towards parity in the key economic pillar has slowed down dramatically "with the gap - which stands at 59 per cent - now larger than at any point since 2008."As a consequence the report estimates that the "global economic gender gap will now not close until the year 2186."

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India jumps 16 spots on Competitiveness Index

India jumped 16 places for the second year in a row to the 39th rank on the World Economic Forum’s (WEF) Global Competitiveness Index 2016-17. It was ranked 55th in 2015-16. This is the largest gain made by any country on the list.

Switzerland was ranked the most competitive country for the eighth consecutive year, followed by Singapore, the United States, the Netherlands and Germany.

The rankings measure countries’ performance on three indicators — basic requirements, efficiency enhancers, and innovation and sophistication factor. Performance on these in turn is measured through sub-indicators.

“Thanks to improved monetary and fiscal policies, as well as lower oil prices, the Indian economy has stabilised and now boasts the highest growth among G20 countries. Recent reform efforts have concentrated on improving public institutions (up 16), opening the economy to foreign investors and international trade (up four), and increasing transparency in the financial system (up 15),” said the report.

While an improvement on the former is likely to be the result of government initiatives aimed at curbing corruption, the latter probably reflects measures taken on corporate governance and related party transactions by authorities such as the Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi). Surprisingly, on reliability of police services, the country moved from 86th in 2015-16 to 53rd in...  Read full Story

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