Nation could not accelerate progress unless women are involved as equal stakeholders: Naidu

The nation could not accelerate its progress unless women were involved as equal stakeholders in every sphere, said Vice President M Venkaiah Naidu on Friday while talking about women empowerment.

"In our country, women's population is higher than men. So, to develop our country, we need to educate women," he said.

He also urged the governments at the state and the Centre, NGOs and civic society at large to collectively work towards educating women about financial management.

Naidu said the financial literacy is important for every individual irrespective of age, gender and social economic status. "When we empower every citizen, we can ensure a powerful economic future for India," he said.

"Our government has started a mission for the elimination of poverty in urban areas and also set target of training two million Self Help Group (SHG) members across Andhra Pradesh and Telangana to educate them about financial concepts of borrowings, investments, financial planning and digital financial tools," he said.

Adding that women empowerment is the main pillar for the development in the country, Naidu said, "To encourage women's for self-employment, the government has introduced 'Pradhan Mantri Mudra Yojana' and skill development programmes. So I hope by few years India will be the third biggest economic country in the world."

Naidu stressed the need to train rural women about digital technologies to promote and sell their products and also to ensure the proper investment of their earnings.