Female empowerment and social progress

In the immediate outskirts of Kanchipuram, we saw three girls in school uniforms pedaling away on their brand new bicycles.  How did we know they were new?  The frames had the thin, filmy, plastic wraps.

My immediate thought was that it was perhaps a government project to give free bicycles in order to make sure that the kids don't drop out of school.  The success has been well documented.

We went to the temple.  As we were ready to leave, the same girls appeared.

I asked them about the bicycles.  Yes, they were new. And provided by the government. The leader of the pack was excited, animated, and eager to share with us how liberating it was for them to now freely go around.  Like this detour that they had taken on the way back home from school--she said that the distance between home and school was about ten kilometers (six miles.)

Girls on bicycles. Girls and women on scooters (Vespas.)  Young women in groups at beaches.  The part of India--way down south in the Subcontinent--has progressed a lot since my childhood days in the old country.

India's south is also where the dynamism is.  People live longer. They have fewer children, so much so that total fertility rates are lower than replacement levels.  Tamil Nadu's rates are on par with many European countries!  As a result, there is a lot of migration from the poorer and populous northern and northeastern parts of the country.

All these further convinced me that the Tamils would have been much better off had the state seceded from the union!

This Brookings Institution briefing notes that India's "economic geography is changing in favor of the southern states."  No surprise there, really, for any India watcher.  "The south has done better in providing basic services, building infrastructure, rejuvenating industry, empowering women, and educating girls."  Female empowerment is the key element here.

The briefing adds:

For a long time, political power, population, poverty, and production were concentrated in the north. As production moves southward, political power will inevitably follow. And as the economic center of gravity moves away from traditional centers of power, it could exacerbate regional tensions. India will have to figure out ways to manage them.

Like I said, Tamil Nadu ought to have been a country of its own, instead of being a part of "India."