THE DISTAFF ROUTE

Women have always been at the receiving end of social values and compensations. Indian women have always been a discounted lot, neglected through apathy and sheer misogyny. The BCCI has made amends, of sorts, by declaring equal pay for men and women By Sujit Bhar

HERE are some sets of interesting information. The first is about the World Inequality Report 2022, which says that Indian men in general earn 82% of the work pay, with the women getting only 18%. The second is about the World Economic Forum's (WEF) Global Gender Gap Report of 2022, which shows India's position at 135 out of 146 nations in the gender gap category. And the third is a recent development, in which the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) has reported that in its recent apex council meeting it has decided that India's male

and female cricketers would henceforth earn the same match fees. Board secretary Jay Shah’s announce

ment is already old news, but the issue is, how does that reflect on the rest of the country? How does it reflect on our unflin ching patriarchy, our misogyny, our obscene record on mistreatment of those on the distaff side? We should start at the beginning, be

cause this just might be the beginning in a society where even rapists are shamelessly pardoned by the state, garlanded for their “valour”, for their sanskriti.

We Indians do not respect ourwomen: that is a given. Startingfrom Draupadi in the Mahabha rata, or maybe earlier, to the garlanding of rapists, we treat women like chattel, like a set of people who were supposedly born to be maligned, ill-treated and exploited. Feminism, if ever, hangs on to the coattails of the elite. Even when badminton champion Saina