Kamal Nath wants women reach highest levels

New Delhi, Feb 12 (ANI): Union Minister of Commerce and Industry Kamal Nath today said that there is a need to take affirmative action to ensure that women of India are encouraged to come to the fore in greater numbers in all walks of life including to the highest levels in the Public Sector Undertakings.

Speaking at the National Meet of the Forum of Women in Public Sector (WIPS): "Evolving the Blue Print of Change", here, Nath said that the core of women empowerment lies in societal change.

"We need to speed up societal change whereby boys and girls are given equal opportunity to go to school, not only in the urban centres but also in the vast rural population of our country," he added.

Interacting during the occasion, the Commerce Minister said that empowerment of women isn't just taking place at the top of the economic pyramid, it is evolving at the bottom as well and added that women in rural India are now more empowered and independent to take decisions.

He further highlighted that India has created a decentralised administration system at the grassroot level for India's 650,000 villages-known as the Panchayati Raj.

"There are now have over 2.2 million elected representatives in the Panchayats, and of them, a third are women-our Panchayats combine political empowerment with social empowerment-the bedrock of a successful democracy," he added.

"We need to understand that countries that do not capitalise on the full potential of one half of their societies are misallocating their human resources and undermining their competitive potential," he said.

The Minister further added that it is important that the Indian PSUs take more affirmative action and seek out deserving women with entrepreneurial and leadership qualities and develop them as 'future business leaders' of the public sector." (ANI)