This is why Economic Survey has changed its colour to pink
New Delhi : The Economic Survey 2017-18 turned out to be different both in its content and its cover, this year it sported a pink cover for a special reason intended to bring equality in economy.
Pink colour of the Economic Survey of India 2017-18 underlines the importance of gender equality for the growth of economy, claiming that gender equality is an inherently multi-dimensional issue. Accordingly, assessments have been made based on three specific dimensions of gender, such as Agency (relates to women's ability to make decisions on reproduction, spending on themselves, spending on their households and their own mobility and health), Attitudes (relate to attitudes about violence against women/wives, and the ideal number of daughters preferred relative to the ideal number of sons) and Outcomes (relate to 'son preference' measured by sex ratio of last child, female employment, choice of contraception, education level, age at marriage, age at first birth and physical or sexual violence experienced by women) which aim to reflect the status, role and empowerment of women in the society.
"The skewed sex ratio in favour of males led to the identification of missing women.
"But there may be a meta-preference manifesting itself in fertility stopping rules contingent on the sex of the last child, which notionally creates unwanted girls, estimated at about 21 million," mentioned the survey.
Over the last 10 to 15 years, India's performance improved on 14 out of 17 indicators of women's agency, attitudes, and outcomes, according to the key findings of the survey.
The survey noted that gender outcomes exhibit a convergence pattern, improving with wealth to a greater extent in India than in similar countries so that even where it is lagging, it can expect to catch up over time.
The survey, however, cautioned that on several other indicators -- notably employment, use of reversible contraception, and son preference -- India has some distance to traverse because development has not proved to be an antidote.