Gender Budget 2024-25

Why in the news?

The 2024–25 Budget has a strong emphasis on women-led development, with pro-women investment topping ₹3 lakh crore and Gender Budget Statement (GBS) allocations hitting 1% of GDP for the first time.

Highlights of Gender Budget 2024-25:

Increase in Funds Supporting Women: Pro-women program allocations have increased from the historical average of roughly 5% to roughly 6.8% of overall budget spending for 2024–2025.
New Reporting Format: Part C is Now Included: Pro-women programs like the PM Kisan scheme, which includes a 30% allocation for women, are now included in a new part called Part C.

Formerly, the Gender Budget 2024-25 was divided into two sections:

Part A represented Women Specific Schemes, such as SAMARTHYA, which was 100% allocated for women. These schemes currently make up about 40% of the GBS, in part because the Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana (PMAY) was fully included.
Part B shows the programs that spend between 30% and 99% on elements relevant to women, including PM AJAY, or Adarsh Gram Yojana.

The Gender Budget Statement’s Various Elements

The three primary sections of the Gender Budget Statement (GBS) are as follows:

Part A: Programs and schemes with a 100% female allocation are included in this part.
Section B: This section deals with programs that provide more than 30% but less than 100% of their funds to women.
Part C: This section, which was just added, lists pro-women programs with fewer than 30% of funding designated for women.

India’s Introduction to Gender Budgeting

India implemented gender budgeting in 2005–06.
This project was led by the Ministry of Women and Child Development and was funded by the Ministry of Finance.
To commence, the Indian government distinguished and categorized budgetary allotments into three groups:
Part A: Programs where women receive 100% budgetary allocations.
Part B: Programs with a minimum budgetary allotment of 30% for women.
Part C: Programs that provide women up to 30% of their funding.

What is Gender budgeting:

Definition: Gender budgeting is a strategic instrument that governments employ to make sure public resources are efficiently collected and allocated based on the various requirements and priorities of different genders.
Instead of making a separate budget just for women, gender budgeting focuses on utilizing the financial structures already in place to address the unique requirements of women.

Background: In 1993, India demonstrated its commitment to gender equality by ratifying the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) (1979).
As a result of this dedication, the Indian Budget for 2005–2006 included the first Gender Budget Statement. Ever since the Gender Budget Statement has been released by the government in tandem with the Union Budget.

Nodal Agency: The Ministry of Finance has ordered the creation of Gender Budget Cells in all key ministries and departments to facilitate this process. The Ministry of Women and Child Development (MWCD) serves as the primary nodal agency for gender budgeting.
The MWCD’s Mission Shakti sub-scheme, Samarthya, includes gender budgeting as part of its goal to empower women.

The framework for gender budgeting consists of five components, including:

Situation Analysis: Evaluate how various gender groupings are doing within a sector.
Policy Assessment: Determine whether policies take recognized gender concerns into account.
Budget Evaluation: Verify whether funds set aside for gender-sensitive initiatives are sufficient.
Monitoring Expenditure: Confirm that money was spent as intended and evaluate the outcome.
Impact Assessment: Evaluate how policies affect the situations that were first examined.

Importance:

Maximizes Resource Allocation: Provides funding to areas with notable gender disparities to meet urgent needs.
Encourages SDGs: In line with Sustainable Development Goal 5, it facilitates worldwide endeavors towards gender parity.
Boosts Accountability: Ensures that pledges to gender equality are kept by offering transparency in the distribution and use of funds.
Enhances Governance: By incorporating gender viewpoints into public finance management, governance becomes more inclusive and efficient.

Challenges Related to Gender Budgeting in India :

Overreporting: In the Gender Budget Statement (GBS), programs such as the PM Employment Generation Programme (PMEGP) display exaggerated amounts.

For instance, 40% of the overall allocation, or ₹920 crore, is stated without any explanation. This kind of exaggerated allocation is a major obstacle to gender budgeting.

Underreporting and Missing Allocations: Women’s needs are frequently undervalued in critical allocations.

• For example, the National Rural Livelihoods Mission (NRLM) is now accurately represented to be entirely devoted to women and girls; nevertheless, this information ought to have been included in the report from the beginning.
• Another example is MGNREGS, which reports under Part B with only 33.6% of its overall expenditure, even though it greatly serves women.

This is not in line with the reality that women work under the plan for 59.3% of person-days; hence, they ought to have been allocated a higher portion of the MGNREGS budget overall.

Furthermore, there is incomplete reporting on programs for female entrepreneurs including Stand-Up India, SVANidhi, and PM Vishwakarma.

Neglect of Key Sectors: Gender budgeting frequently ignores vital sectors that significantly affect women, such as transportation, water collection, and water security.

Way Forward:

• Budgetary entries must have explanations to reduce anomalies in the Gender Budget Statement (GBS).
• Providing these justifications will improve gender results in government programs, simplify gender audits, and improve accounting accuracy.
• The recent addition of a third section to the GBS is a result of years of expert campaigning for better reporting.
• However, the enduring irregularities suggest that the GBS is still devoid of a methodical and scientific approach.

There is progress being made at lowering misreporting and raising the GBS quality, but more work remains.

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