India’s latest showing in the World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap Index is poor: 131st of 148, with overall parity stuck at 64.1%. The country has slipped two places and now sits near the bottom of the South-Asian table. Such rankings matter, not because they shame nations but because they track prospects for half their people.

The Index weighs four factors. India edges forward on three. Women’s estimated earnings have risen to 29.9% of men’s, labour-force participation holds at a record 45.9%, and modest gains appear in schooling and health. These improvements, slight though they are, show that policy can shift outcomes when ministers bother to measure them. Yet the fourth pillar—political empowerment—crumbles. Female MPs fell to 13.8% this year; women in cabinet posts shrink to 5.6%. These figures pull the national score down and betray a broader truth: power, not pay, is the hardest realm to open. Without women at the table, laws favouring them stall or soften; budgets miss their needs; priorities skew elsewhere.

Parliament passed the long-stalled Women’s Reservation Act in 2023, earmarking a third of seats for women. It will not bite until 2029, after a census and new constituency map. That delay looks cynical. Nothing stops parties from fielding more female candidates now, nor from installing women in key party offices and state councils this year. The case for haste is overwhelming. Gender-balanced politics anchors fairer social norms, spurs economic growth and widens the talent pool in a country soon to boast the world’s largest workforce.

India can choose to muddle along, congratulating itself on fractional gains, or it can vault ahead by freeing women to lead. The index should be a spur, not a scorecard. Voters, investors and future generations will reward the nation that grasps the urgency of equality—today, not in four years.