Dynamics of planned development and women issues

The issues relating to women and rising concern about women empowerment has been at the centre stage in developmental process in the 21^st century. In order to convert constitutional commitments into reality, planned development has played a momentous role towards empowering the women and ameliorating their status. Since its inception, a paradigmatic shift has been witnessed from ‘welfare perspective’ during the First Five Year Plan (1951–56) to ‘gender and development’ approach in developmental planning for women during the Eleventh Five Year Plan (2001–2012) and the Twelfth Five Year Plan (2012–2017). These five year plans were conceptualised to strategically carry out the development process by focussing on the areas that needed to be dealt with special concern in order to reach out to the aspirations and ideals of the people in a country by translating them into practical action. Devising of developmental policies and programmes has irrefutably made a difference to the socio-economic status of women in the country, both in women-specific and women-related sectors, through various five-year plans. Those involved in the planning process are rightly wary of the fact that women are the deprived lot in our country because of multifarious deprivations primarily owing to socio-cultural, institutional, economic and financial discriminations. Assessment of the social environment is very crucial, especially in judging the position of women in a given society keeping in view the discriminations and spiralling number of cases of violence against women-both overt and covert. A gender perspective in promoting growth with equity, justice and inclusion of all citizens in development can prove to be critical towards attaining the primary objective of current development plans in a realistic manner. A life-cycle approach to women's development requires an environment that provides overall security to girls and women, from conception to death. The paper seeks to analyse the contribution of strategic development in addressing the women issues.