READING COMPREHENSION PASSAGE (CLASS 11 AND 12 )Towards an India where women lead

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Towards an India where women lead

Santishree Dhulipudi Pandit writes: Women’s emancipation and empowerment need to be first fought for at the level of ideas and narratives. It is at the level of the mind and intellect where the real battle for us lies, from now to India at 100

1. The journey of India at 75 to India at 100 makes me think of many things. But there are two things in particular that capture my imagination: Making higher education more Indo-centric and reducing the gender gap at the top. Even after 75 years of Independence, women have a long way to go. The journey towards equality and equity with inclusion is still long and tedious and appears to be a pipe dream.

2. Women’s leadership in higher education and education-related decision-making bodies at the government level is largely absent as these remain boys’ clubs. Only seven of India’s 54 central universities have women vice-chancellors. This is despite girls outnumbering boys in higher education admissions and women constituting more than 50 per cent of the entry-level university teaching positions. The situation is even worse if one is from the reserved categories.

3. There are several reasons for this: Women need to multitask; marriage and family are still considered women’s responsibilities; despite being qualified, women continue to be hobbled by the ruthless, identity-based politics that plague our higher education institutions. In addition, women must fight entrenched patriarchy and male hegemony. It takes a lot of courage, time and energy to fight these social ills and many women just do not want to, as the fight can get dirty and time-consuming. The few who dare to fight are maligned. A woman’s assertiveness is seen as aggressiveness.

4. These inequalities are further confirmed by the 2022 World Economic Forum’s Gender Gap Index. India’s overall score has improved from 0.625 (in 2021) to 0.629, its seventh-highest score in the last 16 years. It will now take 132 years to reach gender parity, with the gap reducing only by four years since 2021. This is a dim prospect for a civilisation state that boasts of the elevation of the feminine.

5. We need to rediscover and reinvent our civilisational journey. The emancipation and empowerment of the Indian mind is the first step. We are disconnected and colonised in our thinking and scholarship. In the last 75 years, we have moved between self-hatred and self-loathing and just imitating the West without any understanding of ourselves. It is time that we start this intellectual journey towards the creation of knowledge that is original and goes back to our roots. This journey is a must for every Indian who wants India to be a Vishwa Guru. This is my vision for India at 100. Technology and other means are important but they are just instruments and cannot replace the quality of the human mind.

6. Just take the sad plight that we are in with regard to the status of women, although the present government is doing its best to break the various glass ceilings. For me, the glass ceiling to be broken is the intellectual slavery of the Indian mind where all that is Western is good and anything Indian is seen as being regressive and therefore bad. All events need to be secularised and the invaders humanised.

7. In history, we often tend to sing of the valour of men who conquered cities with violence and forget the women’s side of the story. Even though women generously populate our civilisational stories, there has hardly been any retelling of these stories from a feminine perspective till recently. We are a civilisation which has always elevated the feminine and celebrated the harmony of the masculine and the feminine in the image of the Ardhanarishwar.

An article from The Indian Express 

Written by Santishree Dhulipudi Pandit she is vice-chancellor, JNU, Delhi.

Answer the following questions based on reading the above passage.
Fill in the blanks using words from para 1
1. ----------- means each individual or group of people is given the same resources or opportunities.
2. ----------recognizes that each person has different circumstances and allocates the exact resources and opportunities needed to reach an equal outcome.
Pick out the words from para 3 that means -------
3. To move with difficulty---------------
4. An attitude that is firmly established and it is difficult or unlikely to change.--------
5. Determined to get what you want showing no pity on others-----------
6. To say or write bad things about someone especially in a public forum.------------
7. Confident and forceful behaviour ----------------
8. Violent and forceful ----------------
9. The social, cultural, ideological, or economic influence exerted by a dominant group------------
Pick up the words from para 5
10. to free from restraint, control, or the power of another-------------
11. the process of becoming stronger and more confident, especially in controlling one's life and claiming one's rights --------------
12. hating oneself------------
13. feeling that you are not worthy enough or you don’t deserve something-----------
Pick up words from para 6
14. the act of mentally controlling a person by thoughts, words, or actions so that they don’t progress or become independent ----------------
ANSWERS

1. Equality
2. Equity
3. Hobble
4. Entrenched
5. Ruthless
6. Malign
7. Assertive
8. Aggressive
9. Hegemony
10. Emancipation
11. Empowerment
12. Self-hatred
13. Self-loathing
14. Intellectual slavery