The Hindu : National : Gender-budgeting evokes positive response

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Tuesday, Mar 01, 2005

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Gender-budgeting evokes positive response

By Our Staff Correspondent

NEW DELHI, FEB. 28. The introduction for the first time of the concept of "gender-budgeting" in the budget proposals today, evoked a positive reaction from women's groups. Many felt that more needed to be done.

Highlighting the "gender sensitivities" of the budget, the Union Finance Minister, P. Chidambaram, said that it was only a beginning and that, in course of time, all departments would be required to present gender-budgets as well as make benefit-incidence analysis.

The All-India Democratic Women's Association has said that the exercise in presentation of gender disaggregated data was a welcome first step but did not constitute a gender-sensitive budget. "The Finance Minister did not take the next logical step of addressing the deep discrimination suffered by women, revealed by the data, particularly poor women in the allocation of funds for women-specific schemes," the AIDWA vice-president, Brinda Karat, said in a statement here.

Shockingly, the data says that in this budget only eight per cent of the total budgetary support is for women's schemes or for the women's component in general schemes. Of the Rs. 25,000 crores of additional funds only one-sixth would be for women, Ms. Karat said. "It is true that there are some welcome increased allocations for health and education and for development of rural infrastructure which should also benefit women, and which may not form part of the calculations, but it is still a far cry from a gender-just budget," she said. It would be necessary for the Government to reformulate many of its programmes and schemes, to increase funds and to give a much bigger share of the funds to enable women to take their rightful place in the economy, she added.

The NCW chairperson, Girija Vyas, was happy that gender-budgeting had formally been introduced.

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