I was out this morning, and noticed that there were many women on street than usual. Thankfully, those women were not doing the useless activity of going to a function, I saw school girls with their moms, waiting for buses, I saw office workers and so on.

Though there were more women than normal, the number of men far exceeded them as usual. So the question here is where are all the women? Locked up I would say. Locked up in their homes by their tradition, by their religion, by their kids, by their husbands, dads, brothers, moms and so on. They simply do not work.

It’s said that somewhat greater than 30% of women in Tamil Nadu work. So if the working population is 100, then 50 are men, other 50 are women. 30% of the 50 is 15, then what happened to the 35% of the women who could work. Locked up! Locked up in their homes like the women of Taliban Afghanistan. Yet we claim our nation to be free and democratic.

Imagine if we can make the 35% work, it could be 35% increase in economy theoretically. Rather than a woman serving tea to her 3 to 5 family members in the morning, if she worked at a tea shop, she could be serving tea for 50 to 250 people. That’s productivity. This might increase number tea shops, reduce cost, give tough to hotels that charge huge amounts for a tea. There would be more labor in the market, more people would be happy to set up businesses because there are more people to work.

I am not sure if right of woman is embedded in Tamil Nadu’s education syllabus. Forget India, under the BJP, it has become a Hindu Talibanic state, we Tamils think and are different. We have empowered our women a bit, but it far too less and not enough. There is a lot of sticky clay in the heads of Tamils too, and we must use education to clean it out of our heads.