On March 8, more men than women celebrated and enjoyed the International Women’s Day as if every male heart was all praise and sympathy for the female human species that does wonders.
India, known for its classically age-old ‘woman-first’ culture, is today the most infamous hotbed of woman torture and oppression, particularly married women suffering for dowry, incompatibility, in-laws’ attitude and other related issues.
If the woman, by any stroke of luck, is a salaried one, she manages to escape; but if she walks in as housewife, anything could be happening.All the same, lately, instances of extreme cases of ‘atrocities against men’ are being reported. Highhanded, self-opinionated arrogant women, mostly in gainful positions of political authority or politics, have been rising alarmingly in number all over the country. Not surprisingly, therefore, quite a few very sane women are now screaming for ‘men protection’ laws.
All the great women of yore including Rani Laxmibai, Kasturba Gandhi, Kamala Nehru, and Lalita Shashtri are only mere names today occupying history books scripted more like fairy tale stuff. When the UPA political outfit chose a nondescript Pratibha Patil as President discarding the legendary Abdul Kalam for a routine second term, the whole country had slipped into a depression. Madam Patil merrily abused the cosmetic authority to have a nice time. She even forced the government to bleed financially for getting a 70-million-rupee Mercedes Benz S600L Pullman, an armoured car whose special protection features provide cover from military-standard small-arms projectiles and fragments from hand grenades and other explosives, when no enemy would even hurl a pebble at her. She had posed absolutely zero threat perception, but she rode the car with son, husband and ineligible guys and girls who rejoiced over rides in the dream machine.
She would even take on her official foreign trips a horde of gapingly hungry family members by devouring indiscriminately astronomical sums of public money. Around the same time, Jose Mujica, President of Uruguay, lived in a ramshackle of a farmhouse in the suburbs and rode a 20-year old Vespa scooter because he donated most of his salary to the poor.
He had an ancient Volkswagen Beetle for long rides. Madam Patil grabbed the salary to the last penny and took away so many state gifts and household things when her term was over as to have the witnessing house staffs weeping until now for they were forced to serve an undeserving woman.
No wonder, Patil is a long-forgotten character in India now. The President of India gets a salary of half a million rupees apart from incalculable perks. An average wage earner in India makes 10,000 rupees a month if he or she is lucky to get work for the full month.In stark contrast, German Chancellor Angela Merkel earns just six times the average wage of a German citizen. She has just announced her retirement. Later this year, she will step down after serving the country for fifteen long years and also as one of the de-facto top leaders of Europe. Only a few leaders can boast of such a track record. She has worked with five British Prime Ministers, four French Presidents, seven Italian Prime Ministers; and once Joe Biden takes oath, four American Presidents. Rated as the world's most successful woman politician, she has never failed to keep promises made.
Merkel's exit from the Chancellor's office will be the end of an era as she was the first woman to take Germany's top job in 2005. When she rose to power, many had dismissed her as inexperienced and uncharismatic.
, during her lengthy reign, Merkel proved herself as a leader par excellence on all fronts. Merkel's achievements are enviably noteworthy and historic:Three years into office, Merkel faced her greatest challenge in form of the 2008 financial crisis that shook entire Europe. Not only did Merkel steer Germany during the meltdown, but she was at the heart of the response to the eurozone debt crisis, one that could have led to the economic collapse of Greece, Portugal, Ireland, Spain and Cyprus.
Merkel held her own in front of adversaries, even when they tried to overpower or humiliate her. One famous instance of this is when Vladimir Putin brought a dog into a meeting with Merkel. It is quite popularly known that Merkel is afraid of dogs. However, the leader handled the situation with the utmost grace and confidence.Her last years in office, however, were upended by a refugee crisis. More than one million refugees had arrived in Germany in 2015. Not only did Merkel welcome them, but she even convinced some of the European allies to accept them on grounds of humanity. In 2018, she got elected for a record fourth term in office, but decided to step down as votes for her party had declined slightly.
She had to organise a coalition Government and the arrangement prompted her to make room for a seemingly better leader. Though her coalition partners from the Social Democrat party displayed peculiar whims against wage-rise, Merkel successfully drove home the point that a minimum wage can bring about qualitative change in people’s lives by alleviating social injustice. Thus, the €8.50 or £7-an-hour rate was introduced in 2015. The employers had vehemently argued for long that low wages were necessary for German companies to maintain their competitive edge.
Merkel scored big points for her foreign policy endeavours. Constant dialogue with the Russian president, Vladimir Putin nearly resolved the age-old Crimea dispute. The Russian speaking lady achieved this mainly due to her East German upbringing which is influenced heavily by the Russian culture. She has emphasised to other western leaders that pressurising him too much could push Russia into political and economic chaos, which would be good neither for Russia, Germany nor Europe. Her very presence as a Protestant, childless, East German woman at the helm of the Christian Democratic Union, a male-dominated, largely Catholic party, with its roots in West Germany, has changed not only the party but arguably also the German society.
She is the first German female political leader who left many famous men behind her on the way up. Merkel helped turn the deeply traditional party into ‘one of the pillars of the new German consensus’, according to the European council on foreign relations.
This has in turn resulted in new policy direction on everything from energy reform to family and women’s rights – including the recent decision to introduce female quotas into the boardroom.
Branded as the most powerful woman politician in the world, Merkel is a former scientist experimenting with precision and accuracy, She lives in a 200-metre two-bed room house where her husband and she together cook food and wash clothes joyously. Members of the political executive around the corrupt world need to spend a pinchful of their illegally-acquired money to learn from Angela Merkel practical governance so as to be able to improve their patriotic spirit and skills.
On the Woman’s Day, it would be sin to ignore Angela Merkel while observing the event.