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Mahesh

30/08/24 11:23 AM IST

Gender Budget of 2024-25

In News
  • Women-led development remains at the core of announcements made by the Finance Minister (FM) in this year’s Budget.
Gender Based Budget
  • 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, which is way above the usual trends and marks a positive departure from status quo.
  • The increase in 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.
  • Part A had previously constituted 15-17% of overall allocations reported in the GBS till BE 2022-23.
  • Since BE 2023-24, there was a sudden increase in the allocations in part A that raised the share of pro-women schemes with 100% allocations for women to almost 40%.
  • 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.
  • Part B of the GBS reports programmes with allocations of 30-99% for women.
  • Hence, only a part of PMAY was reported earlier. Beginning last year, the entire allocation of ₹80,670 crore in PMAY for 2024-25BE has been reported under part A thus driving the up allocations.
  • Such reporting of PMAY may not be entirely accurate as not all beneficiaries are women. 
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.
  • The GBS reported an allocation of ₹920 crore or 40% of the total allocation to PMEGP, without providing any explanation for such reporting.
  • On the other hand, missing allocations often deflate the amount spent by programmes on women’s needs.
  • For example, this year for the first time the entire allocation to the National Rural Livelihoods Mission (NRLM) is reflected in part A of the GBS, indicating that 100% of its outlay is dedicated to women and girls, which is technically correct and should have been done earlier.
  • In 2023-24BE, only 50% of the scheme’s total outlay used to be reflected in part B of the GBS. 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. 
  • In another instance, 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.
  • It is important to note that women constituted 59.3% of all person days under MGNREGA as of December 2023, and should have received commensurate wages from the total MGNREGA budget, yet only 33.6% gets reflected in the GBS. 
Way forward
  • Efforts to reduce misreporting and improve the quality of the GBS is evident, but there is still a long way to go.
  • The need for including rationale is also to maintain that detailed reporting is not a mere exercise in increasing the quantum of allocations reported for women’s development — it is to ensure actual spending for women in all government programmes, that are well planned and designed to include women’s needs from its inception. Gender responsive budgeting is a powerful tool to close the gender gaps in an economy. 
Source- The Hindu

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