BANGALORE: Gender budgeting (presenting budgetary data in a manner that highlights gender sensitivities of the allocations) made its debut in the second Budget presented by Deputy Chief Minister B.S. Yediyurappa on Friday.

As anticipated, for schemes under Category A (100 per cent allocations for women), the allocation under plan expenditure has gone up from Rs. 351 crore (2006-07) to Rs. 394.5 crore this year. Under non-plan expenditure, the allocation has gone up from Rs. 155 crore to Rs. 291 crore.

A new scheme of the Department of Animal Husbandry and Fisheries is the Rs. 50 crore Dairy Programme for Women to be implemented by the Karnataka Milk Federation. Apart from the regular schemes implemented by the Department of Women and Child Welfare, the women-specific programmes have seen increased allocation for various schemes. For example, the Labour Department has a scheme to start eight new ITI s (industrial training institutes) for women.

But it is in category B (30 per cent allocations for women) that the budget scores. Here 26 departments have raised demands for allocation for women in schemes, which are not gender-specific. The schemes of these 26 departments, which had a plan allocation of Rs. 774 crore in 2006-07, now have Rs. 1,870 crore. The non-plan allocation went up from Rs. 954 crore to Rs. 1,188 crore.

Thanks to gender budgeting, women will comprise 30 per cent of the beneficiaries of these schemes. For instance, the slew of schemes run by Department of Commerce and Industries — ranging from training of entrepreneurs under the Prime Minister's Rozgar Yojana, the Suvarna Kayaka Scheme or the Kousalya Abhivruddhi Yojane.

Budget 2007 has been welcomed as woman-friendly. Madhura Chatrapathy, entrepreneur, said, "Although the gender budget needs fuller analysis because the objectives are unclear, it as such is very gender just".

Devaki Jain, who has worked extensively on gender budgeting said, "more than this document, it is the decision to ban arrack that is going to truly empower women. The loss of Rs. 1,500 crore in revenue can be made up through improved tax collection, and the gains from saving hundreds of mandays," she said.

Pramila Nesargi, Chairperson, Karnataka State Commission for Women, for which the allocation has been doubled to Rs. 1 crore, echoed this.

"Ban on arrack and lotteries means the end of women's miseries and we can begin retrieving thousands of families lost to these vices," she said.

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