Does India’s gender budget need an overhaul?

Part B comprises pro-women schemes which provide at least 30 to 99 percent of the allocation for women (such as Samagra Shiksha). 

Later, the Department of Expenditure, Ministry of Finance, laid out guidelines for Gender Budget Cells (GBC) highlighting its functions on March 8, 2007. A gender budgeting scheme was launched to facilitate capacity building and support research, to encourage planning, formulation of budgets and implementation procedures with a gender lens, allowing state governments and government agencies to use this scheme.

In 2013, a set of guidelines highlighting a road map towards institutionalising gender budgeting was issued to all states. 
Until 2015–16, 56 ministries and departments have set up gender budgeting cells, but India’s gender budget has been below 5 percent for the last five years. The much-awaited gender budget, in 2022, too declined marginally from 4.4 percent in 2021 to 4.3 percent of the total Union Budget. Though the budget has increased in absolute numbers, it has decreased as the total of the Union Budget.

In 2021, the amount for gender budget allocated was $19.7 billion, this has seen an increase of 11 percent to $22.05 billion. Furthermore, Part A of the scheme has been allotted $3.45 billion, leading to an increase of 6 percent, as compared to the last year’s $3.25 billion. Part B of the scheme has been allocated 84 percent of the total gender budget at $18.6 billion; this section of the budget has seen an increase of 12 percent from $16.6 billion. In 2020, the pre-pandemic gender budget was 4.72 percent of the Union Budget.

The pandemic has brought out greater fault lines in the society, clarifying that even though women account for 48 percent of the population in India, they continue to bear the brunt of the pandemic. However, areas such as digital literacy, skill training, and domestic violence against women, only received 2 percent of the budget.

Lessons From Namibia

Namibia, a Sub-Saharan country ranked sixth in the World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Index 2021 report, followed by Rwanda, making them the only two African countries to have made to the list of top 10 countries. Although India ranks 131 in HDI (Human Development Index) and Namibia at 130, Namibia has 91.7 percent of legal frameworks that promote, enforce, and monitor gender equality under the SDG indicator as compared to 83.3 percent in India.

Post-Independence from South Africa in 1990, the Government of Namibia, in1997, adopted the National Gender Policy (NGP) and National Plan of Action (NPAC), in order to address inequalities in men and women which was approved in 1998. The Namibian government has come a long way and has created gender cells in every O/M/A (Offices/Ministries/Agencies) since it launched the NGP (2010-2020) and NPAC policy.

In 2014-15, there was a significant increase in the number of women in the parliament — it increased from 25 percent to 47 percent. Additionally, politicians were trained in gender sensitivity; parliamentary debates from a gender perspective increased; and the Namibian government granted NAD$5.4 billion to Gender Responsive Budgeting (equivalent to 9.2 percent of the total budget) for its annual budget in 2022.
In 2015, the Ministry of Gender Equality and Child Welfare (MGECW) of Namibia came out with a set of Gender Responsive Budgeting (GRB) guidelines. These guidelines highlight the current gender inequity challenges that Namibia faces, this includes: teenage pregnancies, gender-based violence, high poverty levels, especially among young women, and insufficient funding for gender programmes. The guidelines also enlist policy solutions to effectively address the challenges, such as adopting gender-specific expenditures that promote gender equality in public services, conducting gender budget analysis, and developing gender-responsive budgeting tracking tools for the parliament.

Gender Responsive Budgeting In Namibia

There are two key GRB approaches followed in Namibia:

The three-category expenditure approach:

Gender-specific expenditures: Allocations to programmes that specifically target groups of women, men, girls, and boys. These include expenditure on maternal health, girls’ education, micro-credit, and income generation activities for women.

Expenditures that promote gender equity in public service: This comprises allocations to equal employment opportunities in government departments and authorities.

General or mainstream expenditure: The focus of this category is on the differential impact on women, men, girls, and boys. It covers all expenditures, which the above two categories do not include. It consists of expenditures on education, health, infrastructure, mining, security, and defence. 

The five-step approach to gender-responsive budgeting:

A situation analysis of women and men, girls and boys: This analyses the gender needs and uses them to plan, and design programmes.

Gender analyses of policy framework: This step examines policies, plans, and programmes to determine if they address the needs of groups identified in the first step.

Gender analysis of the budget: It involves the analysis of the required revenue and expenditures, in line with the policy objectives and priority needs of target groups.

Monitoring budget implementation: It involves taking measures that spending is done as per the planned budget.

Assessing the gender impact of policy and associated budget: This is the evaluation stage where the impact is examined and is mandatory to understand if the objectives are meeting the needs of the targeted groups. 
As per NDP (National Development Plan) 5, 2017–2022 the government plans to incorporate GRB guidelines in all O/M/As. The co-ordination mechanism for implementation of NGP has become functional, MGECW plans to reduce GBV (Gender-Based Violence) from 33 percent in 2015 to 20 percent. Furthermore, 10 of Namibia’s O/M/As have analysed their budgets through a gender lens, which comprises about 70 percent of the total budget allocation. This analysis revealed that nine out of 10 O/M/As are implementing GRB.

Gender inequality continues to be a major roadblock to India’s development. It needs to follow a nuanced approach that addresses the needs and challenges of vulnerable groups at present and in future by mainstreaming GRB and drawing lessons from Namibia’s policy initiatives.

Measures can be taken by the MWCD to devise a framework that ensures planning, co-ordinating, monitoring and evaluating the progress of initiatives and assessing whether the objectives are being met or not. Administrations across the country must train personnel on gender sensitivity, resources that facilitate income generation, and allocation of funds.

Participation and co-ordination among ministries at all levels must be initiated to attain inclusive and sustainable development.

(This article first appeared in the ORF).