Lines from the land’s ancient scripts convey messages that are eternally relevant in the matter of safeguarding harmonious relationships among members of society. One such line, namely  Yatra naari poojyanthe tatra ramanthe devathaah, which translates to: Where women are respected, the divine beings experience delight, may be appropriate to be cited in today’s column. Women of the land have been both glorified and downgraded for reasons that lie in the narratives of the land’s long history, apart from those in two of the epics. Currently, while anguish has been expressed in some circles about the steadily reducing proportion of females in the nation’s total population, indicating their importance in a certain sense, the air across the country is thick with reports of threat to the so-called weaker sex in various ways, including (a) Female foeticide, (b) Sexual assaults, (c) Honour killing and so on.

The era of raising the image of females to the high point of motherhood to be accepted as divinity and yet subjecting them to tyranny by the males seems to be fading in our times, given the fast changing scenario of women’s rising presence lately in the worlds of administration, sports, journalism, literature, academics, police, defence and so on.

Two areas that witness a dominating place for women, namely (a) Agriculture and (b) Home-making (including the functions of bringing up the children and keeping the hearth glowing) seem to have remained unchanged over centuries and to this day. The wise have expressed their conviction that educating a girl paves the way to educating her entire family. The urban population is just witnessing girls outdoing the boys in studies, particularly at stages upto and including Pre-University classes, a feature that may also emerge in the rural parts before long.

In the context of foregoing narrative, the decision by the Cabinet of Karnataka Government announced this week to provide free education to girls studying in government institutions upto Post-Graduate stage, numbering nearly 3,20,000, points at wider visibility of women in days ahead.