South Asia has not only emerged as the poorest, most malnourished and least gender sensitive region in the world, it has also emerged as one of the most poorly governed regions. The region is home to 515 million people in absolute poverty, 400 million illiterate adults and 80 million malnourished children. Preventable diseases kill over 3 million children each year.

Women are the worst victims. They have been affected disproportionately, quantitatively as well as qualitatively. The region has a distorted sex ratio. There are only 940 females for every 1,000 males, implying that 79 million women are simply missing. The region has both the lowest literacy rates and the largest gap between the rates of male and female literacy-64.1 per cent and 37.2 per cent. The maternal mortality rate is 480 deaths per 1 lakh live births.

Women's political representation is very low. Only 7 per cent of parliamentarians are women. Women's real GDP at US$ 874 is even lower than that of sub-Saharan Africa. The overall picture for gender-related development index (GDI) is poor, even if you keep in mind the region's low human development index.

The gender empowerment measure (GEM), which highlights the extent to which women are involved in economic and political activities, is even worse. The report may have been constrained by the absence of adequate and accurate quantitative data causing, as the report admits, many errors of judgement based on not so accurate data. Some of the figures analysed to reach the conclusions are old, and some are not even from secondary sources of information. But the trends are unmistakable.

Analysing the trends highlighting the disproportionate share of deprivation borne by women in South Asia, the report bares the reasons behind gender discriminatory practices in the social, economic, legal and political spheres. The report raises some fundamental questions: Why are women so severely disadvantaged? How have the pervasive discriminatory practices, which result from and perpetuate the system of patriarchy, affected women? How can women's capabilities be enhanced? And what are the institutional mechanisms needed to bridge the gender gaps in South Asia?

The report states that gender discrimination in South Asia is situated within deeply ingrained systems of patriarchy, which limit and confine women to subordinate roles, and is not helped by women's continued absence in economic, legal and political spheres. Admitting that women in South Asia may work from dawn to dusk, but their contribution is hardly ever acknowledged, the report blames this on the statistical invisibility of women in national income accounts, which is not only due to the flawed definition of economic activity, but also due to the lack of gender desegregated statistics.

The report notes that the enforcement of laws intended to protect or empower women is obstructed by cultural traditions, ignorance of the law and lack of will amongst the enforcement agents and the judiciary. Pointing out the abysmally low representation of South Asian women in decision-making bodies, the report says that most female civil servants are assigned to social sectors, such as health and education. However, few women, including those in the social sectors, are in policy or decision making positions.

Surprisingly, the report glosses over the pointers from other reports. Two most glaring examples conspicuous by their absence are the emergence of two Asias, and sub-Saharan countries faring better than South Asia in some spheres. South and East Asia had approximately similar levels of per capita income in the 1960s. But today, East Asian countries are far ahead of the South Asian countries in most spheres, including HDI and GDI. Maybe there are lessons in the East Asian experience that could be learnt by South Asia.

Similarly, South Asia needs to understand how the sub-Saharan countries are doing better than South Asian countries in spheres such as adult literacy and children's nourishment.

Nevertheless, the Human Development in South Asia 2000 report provides an actionable agenda. Emphasising that achieving gender equality in patriarchal societies calls for a radical change in social, economic, cultural and political spheres, the report identifies provision of equality under law, equality of access to capacity building, equality of economic opportunity and equality in governance as crucially important keys. And it adds that there is a need not only to raise the collective consciousness of the region for speedy implementation of the global and national commitments that governments have made, but also to put structures and finances in place for proper implementation. A gigantic challenge indeed! But the promised results make it worthwhile.