The Nari Shakti Vandan Adhiniyam 2026 could not get through Parliament primarily because it was clubbed with the delimitation exercise. This is despite the earlier passage of the Women’s Reservation Act of 2023, which reserves 33 per cent of seats in the Lok Sabha for women. The current reality is that in Parliament and most state assemblies, the proportion of women is not even half of the 33 per cent reservation being talked about. This raises a question: Is reservation the only way to empower women? While it may be desirable, we don’t think that it can result in true empowerment.
To truly empower women, give them quality education, develop their skills for suitable jobs, and incentivise women’s employment in the formal sector. Only then will their participation in the workforce increase in a meaningful way.
Unfortunately, India’s female labour force participation rate (FLFPR) in 2025 stood at just 40 per cent, as per PLFS data from MOSPI, although ILO (2025) puts this figure at 32.4 per cent, against 68.6 per cent in Vietnam, 59.1 per cent in China, and 80.7 per cent in Nigeria. At the state level, Bihar records an FLFPR of just 24.7 per cent, while Uttar Pradesh (UP) stands at 32.4 per cent, Jharkhand at 43.7 per cent, and Odisha at 47.3 per cent. Bihar also reports the highest fertility rate at 2.8, compared to the all-India figure of 1.9 (Sample Registration System, 2023), consistent with its high annual population growth rate of 1.43 per cent against the national average of 0.9 per cent. More concerning, it is girls in Bihar who exhibit the highest dropout rates in schools across states: 8.7 per cent at the primary level, 25.9 per cent at the secondary level, and 25.1 per cent at the higher secondary level (Unified District Information System for Education Plus, Ministry of Education 2023-24).
Under such socio-economic conditions, how can one empower women?
Skilling and training form a crucial pillar of financial independence. The government deserves credit for establishing the Ministry of Skill Development and Entrepreneurship in 2014, now spanning 38 sectors, with a 2026-27 allocation of Rs 9,886 crore, with Rs 3,400 crore for the Pradhan Mantri Kaushal Vikas Yojana (PMKVY). PMKVY provides free skills training with certification to youth aged 18-45. Even with skill training, which sector can better absorb this trained population?
Look to East and Southeast Asia. Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, China, and Vietnam used the garment sector to transition women into the formal wage economy. India’s apparel sector generates 153 jobs per Rs 1 crore of capital invested, compared to 27 in automobile manufacturing and just 14 in steel (Annual Survey of Industries, 2023-24). But the number that deserves attention is this: The apparel sector creates 55 female jobs per Rs 1 crore investment, while automobiles and steel generate fewer than one. If nari shakti is not to be reduced to a slogan, then the garment sector is the most powerful instrument.
Garment clusters like Tiruppur employ thousands of women, and a large majority of them come from Bihar, Jharkhand, Odisha and UP. They need hostel facilities and stay far away from their families. It leads to high attrition rates and loss of talent. But what if garment clusters are developed in states that supply surplus labour all over India?
In Muzaffarpur, Bihar, Pearl Global Industries has taken this initiative and set up a manufacturing unit that offers a glimpse of what this transition may look like. As of early 2026, the factory employed 650 workers on 500 machines, with plans to scale to 3,000 workers by March-April 2027. Almost 90 per cent of the workforce is female – residents of the district itself. All are first-generation factory workers; women with no prior industrial experience, trained from scratch by the firm. This is a private firm making a commercially rational bet: That a woman worker in a labour-surplus state, if trained, will be productive, reliable, and loyal. In the course of this transition, she retains her social ties, her family, her community. The Centre and states can incentivise such firms in the apparel sector.
The PM MITRA scheme, designed to create large-scale, plug-and-play textile parks with shared infrastructure, represents exactly the kind of instrument needed. Yet, Bihar does not have a single PM MITRA park, nor Jharkhand or Odisha. UP, the most populous state in India, has just one such park.
The challenge is in skilling the women workforce that makes those factories globally competitive. Bihar’s industrial policy recognises this. Training incentives of up to Rs 20,000 per worker exist on paper. Employment-linked incentives allow textile units to claim a subsidy of up to Rs 5,000 per month per employee, or reimbursement of up to 300 per cent of employer contributions to ESI and EPF.
It is the weak training infrastructure and poor industry alignment that are the problem. China and Vietnam developed cluster-anchored training institutions that evolved alongside industry, with curricula designed by firms and quality assurance maintained by the state. Bihar needs to make a similar transition.
Three shifts are essential. First, invest in training infrastructure and curriculum quality, co-managed by industry, government, and technical institutions. Public money should fund infrastructure and quality assurance; firms should lead curriculum design and on-the-job upgrading. Second, restructure employment-linked incentives to be explicitly linked to the employment of women with higher subsidy rates, particularly in the first two years of employment when attrition and training costs are highest. Third, bring infrastructure to where the women are. The PM MITRA scheme may be the right instrument, but it has to open such parks in Bihar, Jharkhand and Odisha that supply labour to southern clusters. That would build true nari shakti. Will the government focus on this? Only time will tell.
Gulati is distinguished professor, Gupta is research associate, and Chanda is research assistant at ICRIER. Views are personal
