Under longest-serving woman FM, gender Budget hits a high

Government spending on the gender Budget is going to be the highest ever on record in 2024-25. Under the Interim Budget, ~3.1 trillion is allocated for schemes and programmes that address issues involving women. In comparison, about ~2.2 trillion was allocated in the previous financial year.

Sitharaman is the country’s first full-time woman finance minister and also the longest-serving.

With this increase in allocation, the gender Budget now accounts for 6.5 per cent of the total expenditure by the Centre, the highest ratio ever on record. The average over the past two decades stands at 4.8 per cent. According to the figures for the Revised Estimates for 2023-24, the government is likely to exceed the FY24 gender Budget by 116.5 per cent and spend over ~2.6 trillion.

India’s gender Budget was specifically started in 2005-06 to view the budgetary exercise through a gender lens and to ensure that the benefits of development do not exclude women. It does not indicate a creation of a separate Budget per se, rather it seeks to address the specific needs of women. The gender Budget, however, remains less than 1 per cent of the country’s gross domestic product.

Lekha Chakraborty, professor and chair at the National Institute of Public Finance and Policy who was involved in instituting the gender Budget in India, said the allocation of less than 1 per cent is not satisfactory.

“The size of the gender Budget is a macroeconomic question. However, given the fiscal consolidation path, unless taxes are buoyant, the FM seeks public expenditure compression to reach her deficit target. It is refreshing that the public expenditure cut has not happened on gender budgeting.”

“The major issue that the gender Budget has faced over the years is the bottlenecks in its implementation resulting in slow progress,” said Angellica Aribam, founder of Femme First Foundation, a non-profit working to augment gender participation in politics. “With more funds and subsequent pressure from the government, these can be overcome over time,” said Aribam.

Chakraborty said it was important to apply a gender lens to such mainstream spend ing, otherwise it might get reduced to just specifically targeted programmes for women which is hardly one per cent of the budget.

“Part B of gender budgeting refers to the intensity of gender allocations in mainstream public spending. The proportion of intrinsic gender components in these spending is calculated based on sectoral administrative data disaggregated across gender in accessing these programmes,” she said, adding that getting gender disaggregated fiscal data from detailed demand for grants itself was a challenge. She said “mainstreaming gender in budgets requires to look into the intensity of gender in mainstream allocations, which is compelling”.