Opinion: India’s Women Are Advancing, Whether the World Notices Or Not

Sanbeer Singh Ranhotra

India is also showing the world how women can take the lead in handling newer tools and technologies

For the better part of the 20th and 21st centuries, India served as the default cautionary tale in Western discourse on women’s rights. Op-ed writers in London and New York positioned the country as a danger zone. NGO reports framed it as a laboratory of patriarchal dysfunction.

The narrative became so entrenched that it drowned out an inconvenient reality: India has been working with a laser-eyed focus on uplifting the lives of women. Since 2014 alone, Prime Minister Modi’s government has driven measurable and even large-scale improvements in nearly every indicator that matters for women’s safety, economic participation and political representation.

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The numbers do not lie, even when the commentary does.

Between 2017 and 2024, female labour force participation in India nearly doubled, climbing from 23.3 percent to 41.7 percent. In rural areas, the jump was even sharper: from 24.6 percent to 47.6 percent. That was a 69 percent surge that outpaced every other BRICS nation. Brazil, China and Russia saw stagnation or decline in the same period. India recorded the highest growth.

Meanwhile, India’s Maternal Mortality Ratio (MMR) has shown a significant decline since 2014, dropping from 130 per lakh live births in 2014 to 88 per lakh live births in 2022 – a 86 percent reduction. Eight Indian states now meet the UN Sustainable Development Goal target of 70 or below. Institutional births have risen from 79 percent to 89 percent, indicating that women in India have access to better health and maternal care facilities. India’s share of global maternal deaths has fallen to about 7.2 per cent, down from higher levels........

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