For full text in pdf format click here

Section-5

Marginalised Sections: Women, Dalits and Adivasis

(a) Women and Gender Budgeting

When the Finance Minister for the first time presented a gender budgeting statement in 2005-06, it was hailed by several quarters as a positive step towards gender mainstreaming of the budget contents. In 2005-06, it started with a modest effort with only 10 departments producing gender budget statements. In the subsequent years, the number of departments producing gender budget increased to 24 in the year 2006-07 and further to 31 in the year 2007-08. However, for the last two years the number of departments producing a gender budget statement has remained stagnant at 32. If we analyse the amount of money allocated in these departments towards gender budget during last three years, it creased from around 13.47 percent in 2007-08 RE to 20.48 percent in 2008-09 RE. However, in the present budget the government has allocated less money towards women specific purposes with only 19.47 percent of the total departmental budget (See Table-26). It should be remembered here that these department sclearly hold significant elements in which women specific programmes are covered. Still the proportion of allocation towards women specific programmes and heads in these departments do not cross one fifth of the total allocation in these departments. This clearly shows a betrayal of the recognition the government had once shown towards the struggles led by numerous civil society organizations for making the policy making paradigm more gender sensitive.

Table-26

Stagnation in Number of Departments Presenting Gender Budget Statement in Union Budget

Figure-9

Decline in Proportion of Gender Budget in total Allocation in 2009-10

Table-27

Abysmally low Non Plan Allocation for Gender Budgeting

Table-28

Top 10 Departments as per their Proportion GB in Total allocation  in 2009-10 Budget

Table-29

Top 10 Departments as per the amount of their allocation on GB in 2009-10

Table-30

Increase/ Decrease over Allocations for 2008-09 RE

A further analysis of the gender budget statements for last four years reveal that the share of allocations towards gender budgeting in these departments has declined in plan head from around 32 percent in 2008-09 RE to 31.3 percent in 2009-10 BE. However, in the non plan head, the allocation is abysmally low at only 2.5 percent of the total non plan allocation of these departments (See Table-27).

Out of total 32 departments, the top-10 departments in terms of their GB share in total departmental allocation, account for around 98 percent of the total gender budget statement. However, even these top-10 departments provide less than 40 percent of their own allocations towards gender budgeting (Table-28).  Similar is the case with top 10 departments as per their amount of allocation towards gender budgeting. While in terms of proportion of allocation towards GB, Ministry of Women and Child Development tops the list with more than 60 percent in 2009-10, in terms of total allocation, department of 2009-10.  Out of total 32 departments that have presented a gender budget statement in 2009-10, 19 have registered a decline in their proportionate allocation in total allocation.

(b) Dalits and Adivasis

In the current year also, the betrayal of commitments towards the Scheduled Caste Sub Plan (SCSP) and Tribal Sub Plan (TSP) continued.  As can be seen from Table-31, the total allocation for SCs and STs as mentioned in Statement 21 of the Expenditure Budget Vol-1 of the Union Budget, declined from around 3.4 percent in 2007-08 RE to around 3.1 percent in 2009-10 BE. In case of non plan expenditure, it is just 0.3 percent in 2009-10. If one cares for the provisions under Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe Sub-plans, the budget should have allocated at least Rs. 58497 crores of Plan allocations under SCSP and TSP to meet the guidelines of 22.39 percent allocation for SCs and STs. However, the present budget has allocated only less than 11 percent in the year 2009-10 (See table-32). The amount denied to SCs and STs is around Rs. 32673 crore in 2009-10 BE. As can be seen in figure-9, the amount denied to SCST as proiportion of the ideal amount onle under plan head is as high as 56 percent in 2009-10 BE which has increased over last couple of years.

Figure-10

Amount Denied to SC/ST as proportion of Ideal allocation

Table-31

Allocations on Programmes Targeted for welfare of SCs and STs as % of Total Budget Allocation[1]

Table-32

Increasing trend of Amount Denied to SCST related programmes in the Union Budget

For full text in pdf format click here