AUTHORS: AKHILA KUMARAN and SHATAKSHI GARG.
Akhila is a Ph.D. researcher at TISS, Mumbai, and Research Assistant at the Central Marine Fisheries Research Institute, Kochi. Shatakshi has completed her Master’s in Applied Economics, and is currently employed as PFM Consultant at eGovernments Foundation, Bengaluru, and was formerly with the 15th Finance Commission.
In 2021 when ManjammaJogathi danced their way to receive the Padma Shri (and to our hearts), a great deal more than an artist took the center stage. While not the first person from the transgender community to be recognized with the award for their distinguished contribution to the arts, Manjamma remains among the very select few. It is perhaps significant to examine not just why the recognition to the community has been late, but also what can be done about it. This essay is an attempt to examine one of the many ways through which gender can be mainstreamed focussing specifically on one such mechanism – the gender budget.
The idea of a budget is fairly straightforward in its economic logic, but what does not seem straightforward is what the economic logic of the document means for gender. How can one leverage an economic proposition and see it as an important part of gender justice? What do budgets ultimately portray about the priorities of the government? We argue that currently, as practiced, the budget document, especially the gender budget statement (GBS henceforth), misses several key components reducing it to an accounting statement. We argue instead that GBS is a ‘political document’ reflecting the priorities and choices exercised by the government and citizens; and as an indigenous scholar, Dr. Cana UluakItchuaqiyaq put it, “a moral document”.
In our analysis of the GBS in India, we underscore that there remain important yet unexplored opportunities within the conceptual framework that provides ample scope to broaden our vision for a gender-just society. We thus propose the need to re-think the framework by incorporating concepts of intersectionality, activate transparency, and information justice in the design of the GBS.
Gender Budgeting in India: A Short History
When we examine gender budgeting in India, the year 2005-06 marks the beginning of the attempt at the national level with the stated objective being:
“As part of the accounting reforms, it is the intention of the Government to consider aspects of beneficiary class identification for a meaningful analysis of the incidence of public expenditure and facilitate the evaluation of beneficiary-impact for identified targets groups. An initial and maiden effort has been made to present here the budget provisions that are substantially meant for the welfare of women and children.” (Statement 19 – Expenditure Budget, Union Budget, 2005-06)
The objective is certainly laudatory but we have not moved forward from budgetary allocations since then, making the GBS a mere accounting exercise without any outcome budget and/or benefit incidence analyses studies to follow up. Written in two parts – Part A reflects schemes that have 100% allocation for women and Part B showcases schemes with 30% or more allocation for women –the gender budget constitutes only a small part of the entire budget. As Shreya Raman, points out in the previous five years, budgetary allocations as a part of the total expenditure, have remained constant at five percent. (Please refer to Table 1).
Table 1: GB as a percent of Total Expenditure, 2017-18 to 2022-23 (all figures in percent)
| BE | RE | Actuals | The year-on-year decline in BE | |
| 2017-18 | 5.28 | 5.29 | 4.34 | |
| 2018-19 | 5.09 | 5.11 | 4.98 | 3.47 |
| 2019-20 | 4.91 | 5.29 | 4.66 | 3.54 |
| 2020-21 | 4.72 | 6.01 | 4.33 | 4.04 |
| 2021-22 | 4.40 | 4.41 | 6.66 | |
| 2022-23 | 4.33 |
Keeping in mind the small allocation,, it is important to consider what constitutes the gender component within the statement – for example, the GB 2022AYUSH ministry lists the Central Councils for Research in Ayurvedic Sciences, Siddha and Unani medicine in Part A. An explanatory note is required to justify such inclusion. What we echo, with gender budget stalwarts, is that there needs to be a more careful consideration of what constitutes the gender component of every policy/scheme.
Poor Fiscal Marksmanship: A Tale of Revolving Numbers
Even as an accounting statement, the GB displays features of poor fiscal marksmanship. This is evident with regards to the Revised Estimates (BE) of the allocation increasing dramatically (vis a vis the Budget Estimates) followed by the actual expenditure being closer to the BE figures(Please refer to Figures 1 and 2). This hints at the possibility that expenditures incurred are mostly non-capital in nature as well as the lack of planning(Table 2), pointing to a serious lack of understanding of what is the original goal of the gender-responsive budget: gender justice.
Figure 1: Total Gender Budget: Variation between BE, RE, and Actual figures (in Rs crore), 2004-05 to 2022-23
Figure 2: Total Gender Budget: Variation between BE, RE, and Actual figures (in percent), 2017-18 to 2020-21
Table 2: Share of Capital Expenditure in Total Expenditure
| 2021-22 Budget | ||||
| 2019-20 | 2020-21 BE | 2020-21 RE | 2021-22 BE | |
| Department of Rural Development | 0.01 | 0.08 | ||
| Ministry of Women and Child Development | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.02 | 0.02 |
| Ministry of Education | 2.35 | 2.24 | 0.27 | 0.03 |
| Department of Agriculture, Cooperation and Farmers’ Welfare | 0.01 | 0.04 | 0.05 | 0.05 |
| Department of Health and Family Welfare | 2.67 | 1.64 | 5.37 | 3.52 |
| Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs* | 45.90 | 42.26 | 22.03 | 47.19 |
| Total Budget Expenditure | 12.50 | 13.55 | 12.73 | 15.91 |
*Note: For the MHUA, while the share of capital expenditure of 47.92 percent in total expenditure of the Ministry is impressive, we have to look at the capital expenditure share on schemes covered under GB. In the Notes on Demand for Grants of the Ministry, we find zero capital expenditure on those schemes.
From Membership to Citizenship: Gender Budget as a tool for Gender Justice
Experts like Dr.LekhaChakraborty have consistently argued that GB is one important aspect of achieving gender equality. What we need is to build on the quantitative statement and make comprehensive changes. This means using qualitative studies to understand the situations on the ground. An illustrative example is mentioned in the book, Invisible Women by Caroline Criado-Perez citing how snow clearings done in Sweden had significantly different impacts on women and men. Criado-Perez points out that due to differences in travel patterns, there is an important effect on women when snow clearing is prioritized along the main arteries and only subsequently performed along the pedestrian and narrower pathways. Travel patterns show that overall men travel more along the main roads, with their commute comprising movements between work and home, whereas, for women who perform significant other unpaid work, the mode of commute is more complicated. Further, the differences in mode of transport reflect reasons of gender as well – the household division of unpaid care labor. For example, she points out that the practice of women making multiple short trips en route to work –“trip chaining” Therefore public policies often considered gender neutral, as Diane Elson puts it, are often gender blind.
Beyond the Binary: Incorporating Intersectionality within Gender Budget
The example stated above of snow clearing, for instance, is infinitely more complicated when we add the intersectionality of disability, race, and in the Indian context, caste as well. We feel this assumes specific significance in the wake of a pandemic where health and safety definitely require focus but we also need to broaden our scope to include and understand more than the usual axes of reproductive rights and maternal health, which do not reinforce gender stereotypes. As it can be clearly seen from Figure 3, six Ministries constitute 90 percent of the total gender budget.
Figure 2: Six Demands for Grants that constitute roughly 90 percent of the Total Gender Budget
Though it is encouraging to see demands arising from departments other than the Ministry of Women and Child Development and the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, as would often be the case, we must also keep in mind that as budgets expand, the definition of gender must also be inclusive. The Aayogreport on gender mainstreaming in governance provides useful insights in this regard by applying the gender lens to emerging needs in areas like skill development, climate change, domestic violence, and social inclusion. It also mentions mention of the transgender community as the rightful recipients of several schemes. This is the direction that we need to follow.
Conclusion: Gender Budget as a tool for Information Justice?
Our analysis of the GB in India suggests the need to go back to the drawing board, drawing from the example of Rwanda perhaps, where the gender budgeting statement is supplemented with gender situation analysis, output, planned activities, indicators, and targets. In doing so, there is also the need to keep in mind the caveat of information justice. Jeffrey Alan Johnson states information justice is “A way of understanding data in the context of an information system and about justice directly”. Using such a notion, Johnson argues for subsuming the concept of open data within the information justice framework. In India with the rich legacy of the right to information movement, we need to argue for the rightful disclosure of public spending so that what is promised to citizens is delivered. In the context of the Gender Budget, we place the same logic for active rather than passive transparency. The former is when there is the availability of open data but the latter comes with the understanding of the different ways in which data presents issues of justice– who gets to design and govern data (social privilege), who gets to access uses data (capability), and who gets to use. By this we mean not only how data is available and free to use as budgets need to be, given that one is talking about public money, but also because there is a need to ensure that data privacy is ensured even as budgets become expansive. This, we propose, assumes significance in the wake of the inclusion of communities such as LGBTQIA+ regarding the concept of consent as the fulcrum.
A version of this essay, titled “Money talks: What do we want from the gender budget?” was presented at the 30th International Association for Feminist Economics (IAFFE) Annual Conference on July 01, 2022
AUTHORS’ DECLARATION: The views and opinions expressed in this publication are those of the authors solely. They do not purport to reflect the opinions or views of the affiliated institutions.
*“The views expressed in the article are authors’ personal and are not endorsed by the Global Policy Consortium (GPC) or assumed by their members”
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