Analysing the Gender Budget of 2024-25
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Analysing the Gender Budget of 2024-25
Subject: Economy
Sec: Fiscal Policy
Context:
Women-led development remains at the core of announcements made by the Finance Minister (FM) in this year’s Budget. This commitment to women empowerment was reflected in Budget allocations to pro-women programmes, as reported by the Gender Budget Statement (GBS). The GB reached 1% of GDP estimates in 2024-25 for the first time, and overall allocations currently stand at more than ₹3 lakh crore for pro-women programmes.
Reason for the increase:
- The GBS, since it was first introduced in 2005-06, consistently reported an average share of 5% of the total budgetary allocations, with marginal ups and downs.
- This year is special as the share of allocations to pro-women schemes stands at approximately 6.8% of the total budget expenditure for 2024-25.
- GB allocations are driven by two factors.
- A part of this increase has been on account of the newly included Part ‘C,’ a third part in the GBS that reports pro-women schemes with less than 30% provisioning for women.
- The PM Kisan scheme in the agriculture sector has been reported in part C with an outlay of ₹15,000 crore. This is 25% of the total outlay of the programme.
- The second factor driving the overall increase is the increment in part A of the GBS. Part A reports expenditures in schemes with 100% allocation for women.
- This was mainly due to a change in the reporting where the Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana (PMAY) — rural and urban — started getting reflected in part A instead of part B.
Other instances of over-reporting/under-reporting:
- Over-reporting may also be found in other instances such as the PM Employment Generation Programme (PMEGP), which aims to assist entrepreneurs in setting up micro businesses in the non-farm sector.
- Missing allocations often deflate the amount spent by programmes on women’s needs. The GBS this year has also correctly reported increased allocations for the Ministry of Electronics & IT. But it missed out reporting pro-women allocations in the schemes for women entrepreneurs such as PM Vishwakarma, SVANidhi, and Stand-Up India.
- The Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS), which has the third highest allocation among schemes for women in the GBS, is currently reported under part B with ₹28,888.67 crore which is 33.6% of its total outlay.
Gender Budget:
- Gender budgeting is an approach that aims to incorporate a gender perspective into the process of budgeting at all levels of government. The goal of gender budgeting is to promote gender equality and ensure that public resources are used effectivelyto address the needs and priorities of women and men. India has been implementing gender budgeting since 2005.
- The Gender Budget is not a separate budget for womenbut an accounting statement highlighting allocations for women beneficiaries or girls.
Gender budgeting leads to a more equitable future:
Social factors
- Empowerment of women– through the encouragement of women entrepreneurship, skill development, and provision of credit.
- Achievement of social goals– helps achieve the sustainable development goal(SDG) 5 of gender equality.
- Reduced Gender Disparities: gender budgeting can be used to ensure that adequate resources are allocated to programs that promote girls’ education, improve maternal health, and provide women with employment opportunities.
Economic factors
- Efficient distribution of resources– targeting areas that impact women, and ensuring accountability. Ex-Nirbhaya fund.
- Care economy– gender budgeting accounts for the unpaid care economy, neglected in GDP.
Political factors
- Promoting Women’s Participation: For example, gender budgeting can be used to ensure that women’s voices are heard and that their needs and priorities are adequately represented in the budgeting process.