It's best time in India for women to live: Indian envoy to UN

United Nations: India's envoy to the United Nations, Ruchira Kamboj, said that the current time is the best to be a woman in the country. She claimed that the Indian government is empowering women at all levels, PTI reported.

A high-level panel discussion was organised by the Permanent Mission of India to the United Nations, in partnership with UN Women India, this week. It was titled 'Leveraging Public-Private Commitment for Women's Greater Access to Technology and Education" and was organised at the United Nations Headquarters on the margins of the ongoing 67th session of the Commission on Status of Women.

Ruchira Kamboj said, "In India, there has been enormous, enormous growth in the past eight-nine years particularly, and today, I think it is perhaps the best time to be a woman in India. I mean that very sincerely."

"We recognise the transformational capacity of technology to provide impetus to women's empowerment and sustainable development," she said. "This is a fantastic time to be a woman, and the government is fully empowering you at all levels. The Prime Minister has emphasised a model of women-led growth and development, and it is very much a reality,"

She then said that the Indian government had introduced many citizen-centric digital initiatives, primely focusing on women in financing, credit, technology, and employment. These were intended mainly to provide immediate assistance to women in distress, prevent violence against women, and promote women's full and equal participation in every sphere of society, the envoy said.

She then spoke on two major initiatives -- the Digital India programme and the Jan Dhan-Aadhaar-Mobile (JAM) trinity -- that have shown the capacity of technology to provide impetus to women's empowerment and sustainable development. She explained how these initiatives had facilitated direct benefit transfer to nearly 200 million women, PTI reported.