Women and work

Apropos the article ‘Indian women: climbing the U curve’ (January 15), though there has been a significant rise in Female Labour Force Participation (LPR), it is not in sync with GDP growth.

The female LPR is still 37%, a figure far lower than that of the other large economies.

Creating equal opportunities, ensuring upgradation skills of the women, reducing care giving burden by creating suitable social institutions, eliminating the need to carry water for long distances by prioritising provision of piped water to all the individual households, etc. would help in accelerating the increase in female LPR in India.

Unless these shackles created and still being nurtured by patriarchal attitudes are broken, the progress of women and their participation in labour force will not pick up. AI is poised to play a very large role in the future development and it is essential that the distortions that may creep in due to the historical data, which has built-in of biases of various kinds including gender bias, are removed while employing Generative AI.

Kosaraju Chandramouli

Hyderabad

Demand for MBAs

The article titled ‘Why can’t B-schools forecast MBA demand better?’ (January 15) is self-explanatory. Students do a lot of hard work to crack the B-school entrance examinations and also toil to get an MBA.

They need decent placements. B-schools are in a better position to view and forecast the job market and ensure decent jobs for their students. The article correctly ends with a cautionary note “Never waste a crisis as an opportunity for change”.

S Ramakrishnasayee

Chennai

‘Taxing’ India

There are discussions in media on the Interim budget. The OECD Inclusive Framework on Base Erosion Profit Shifting (BEPS) has been continuously evolving to develop an agreement to help address tax avoidance, ensure coherence of international tax rules, and, ultimately, a more transparent tax environment. Today, BEPS 2.0 also looks to address the challenges arising from the taxation of the digital economy.

Tax havens attracting FDI/FPI flows do not ensure economic growth, which needs industry.

But India’s case is different as many MNCs operating and doing business in this country shift their tax base to low tax countries, which is unfair. India with one of the strongest manufacturing hub deserves a higher share of foreign capital inflow and investment.

Vinod Johri

Delhi

Unholy alliance

The AAP Rajya Sabha MP Raghav Chadha having claimed that the January 18 Chandigarh Mayoral election, which his party is contesting in alliance with the Congress “will be decisive” for the INDIA bloc, makes very interesting reading. It’s a different matter that he also went on to state that in some states we will fight ‘together’ and in others we will fight ‘separately”.

In fact, their such ‘self servingly’ coming together could be nothing but some sheer political opportunism. However, one just shudders to imagine the impending fall out of their such need based ‘hobnobbying’ when it comes to the INDIA bloc’s govt formation at the Centre.

Kumar Gupt

Panchkula (Haryana)