Page 42 - Forbes - India (January 2020)

Pre-Bu Dget S P ecial
Pre- Bu D get S P ecial

total Gross Domestic Product (GDP). followed by about 19 percent for
The spending on gender has not Gender Budget and GDP health and welfare, 19-22 percent
increased proportionately with the Over the years, the size of India’s gender for human resource development
Union Budget either, with the GRB budget has remained less than 1 percent of and 12 percent to the WCD ministry.
the country’s GDP
as a percentage of total expenditure In short, about 85 percent of the
hovering mostly between 3 percent 2015-16 0.59% total gender budget allocation was
and 6 percent in the last decade. 2016-17 0.64% just within these four ministries.
“GRB in India is still more about 2017-18 “There is no planning on how to
aggregation of allocations and 0.55% make this expenditure more effective
expenditures for women-centric 2018-19 0.66% for women,” says independent
schemes. There is no real focus nor 2019-20 0.63% economist Mitali Nikore. “The
is it used enough as a policy tool 0.0 0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4 0.5 0.6 0.7 0.8 MSME department, for example,
for a more gendered discourse of Source union Budget documents runs about 300 government schemes.
implications,” says Avani Kapur, Why doesn’t any of it have a gender
fellow, Centre for Policy Research. lens? Textile and food processing
She believes gender weights are from the WCD ministry, under whom industries employ maximum women
assigned to expenditures with this committee is to be formed, did workers, then why aren’t allocations
a degree of arbitrariness. “That not respond to Forbes India’s queries. done keeping that in mind? The
the entire Pradhan Mantri Awas Experts point out that spending gender budget needs to focus on
Yojana [affordable housing scheme] on gender is usually concentrated specific industries and departments.”
allocation is being reported as with four or five ministries, and A large part of the problem might
100 percent women [in Part A of that the Budget in February is an also be a mindset that views women
the Budget] is a case in point.” opportunity to diversify allocations. as maternal or reproductive entities
Chakraborty says that even within For example, as per Union Budget and not economic drivers, adds Tara
allocations, the gender budget shows documents, between 2016 and Krishnaswamy, co-convenor, Shakti,
42 signs of fiscal marksmanship, which 2019, about 35-37 percent of the a non-partisan collective working
refers to the deviation between gender budget was allocated to to increase women’s participation
budgetary promises and reality. “Just the ministry of rural development, in legislature. She might not be far
announcing a flagship programme in off the mark. Last year, the Centre’s
the Budget also needs to be taken with allocations for mother and child
caution,” she says, explaining that welfare got a major boost. The
higher budgetary allocations do not maternity benefit outlay under the
guarantee higher spending on women. Pradhan Mantri Matru Vandana
For example, an analysis of Yojana was doubled from `1,200
the gender budget indicates that crore to `2,500 crore, while the
the budgetary allocation of `267 budget for the Integrated Child
crore for the National Mission Development Services increased
for Empowerment of Women in from `925 crore to `1,500 crore.
2018-19 was revised to `115 crore. “While it is supremely important
Similarly, allocations under the to have healthy mothers and
Ujjawala (distribution of LPG children, we need to help women
connections) scheme was slashed be productive contributors to the
from `60 crore to `20 crore during economy,” Krishnaswamy explains.
the same period. Chances are that “Focus on revenue and tax benefits
the actual on-ground spending “the mSme DePartment for working women. For example,
might be even lower than the revised women are much more part-time
estimates. “We need independent runS aBout 300 workers than men are, and in
institutions like fiscal councils to government SchemeS. countries like the US, you have health
capture fiscal marksmanship. They insurance benefits for part-time
act as watchdogs,” says Chakraborty, why DoeSn’t any of it work, which act as an incentive for
confirming that the broad-based have a genDer lenS?” keeping women in the workforce.”
committee for gender budgeting, as The Budget, she adds, must also
announced by the finance minister, MItaLI NIkore, economist be more inclusive of women in
has not been constituted yet. Officials unpaid care or informal economy.

forbes india • january 31, 2020