Edits & Columns

Budgeting for women Tap the potential of gender budgeting   For a country where discrimination against women manifests itself in nearly all areas of life, finance minister P Chidambaram’s announcement that the government plans to gradually introduce gender budgeting comes as a welcome measure. By going in for gender-budgeting, India joins the league of of those countries, both developed and developing, that have either opted for, or are moving toward, gender-sensitive budgeting. Among these nations are Switzerland, UK, South Africa, Uganda and neighbouring Sri Lanka. The FM’s announcement comes not merely on the urging of women’s groups in the country, who have been pressing this demand for long, but also because the UPA government’s common minimum programme (CMP) promises women’s empowerment. While the move is in the right direction, we hope the exercise doesn’t merely remain confined on paper. Instead, it should serve as both, the takeoff and reference point, for women-oriented initiatives. The FM says Budget data will “be presented in a manner that the gender sensitivities of the budgetary allocations are clearly highlighted.” Indeed, as part of the effort to have gender-sensitive budgeting, the FM has also given details of what is described as an “initial and maiden effort” to present here the Budget provisions that are substantially meant for welfare of women.” For the coming fiscal, the total allocation under gender budgeting is Rs 14,378.68 crore, with Rs 14,342.41 crore being the Plan allocation and Rs 36.27 crore being the non-Plan one. The government has said the department of women and child development, along with the National Institute of Public Finance & Policy, will undertake a review of the public expenditure of many departments, among these rural development, health, family welfare and labour, through the ‘gender lens,’ so that women benefit more from government schemes. Decidedly a well-meaning exercise on the part of the government. But other than having greater allocations to help women, what will be of greater import is to ensure that money apportioned for women’s welfare is actually spent on them. Else, the exercise of gender budgeting will prove meaningless. It is implementation on the ground that will be of great consequence.

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