'End gender bias at home'

Patna: Gender inequality begins at home and it must end, stressed visiting professor of New York University Ruchira Gupta here on Saturday.
Speaking on the second day of the four-day international conference on ‘Social Statistics in India’ to mark Asian Development Research Institute (ADRI)’s silver jubilee celebrations that kicked off on Friday, Ruchira said the need of the hour is to reach ‘the last girl — the 13-year-old in a brothel’.The topic of her lecture was ‘Challenging SMART: Reaching the Last Girl — the Antyajaa’.
“This inequality begins at home. A girl cannot take decisions and has to get approval for everything. A boy in the family has the freedom to decide about himself. This is the girl we must think about before deciding policies,” she added.
Delivering a lecture on ‘The 2030 Development Agenda: Challenges for Statisticians’, T C A Anant, secretary and chief statistician, Government of India, said developing countries had the obligations and responsibilities to meet development challenges. A right measurement framework has to be established through dialogue and processes regarding the indicators for sustainable development, he said. M Govinda Rao, emeritus professor, National Institute of Public Finance and Policy, was the chairperson of the session.
Sabina Alkire, director, Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative, University of Oxford, said India has the oldest multidimensional poverty indices (MPI) data among the 50% poorest countries. Alkire said some of the poorest countries like Senegal and Bangladesh had regular data collections. Abdul Alim, regional adviser (South Asia), Social Policy, UNICEF, presided over the session.
The pre-lunch technical session had Sunil Ray, director, A N Sinha Institute of Social Studies, in the chair. Vikas Dimble, country Economist, IGC India-Central Programme, and Sudhanshu Kumar, assistant professor, National Institute of Public Finance and Policy, were the speakers.
Yagnamurthy Sreekanth, professor and head of Education Survey Division, NCERT, Anugula N Reddy, assistant professor, National University of Educational Planning and Administration, Pradeep Kumar Choudhary, assistant professor at JNU and M K Jamuar, professor at Ranchi University made their presentations on the occasion.
Arvind Subramanian, chief economic adviser, GOI, would deliver a lecture on ‘Overview of the Indian Economy’, on the third day of the conference scheduled on Sunday. The session will be coordinated by Hari Menon, deputy director, India country programmes, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.