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Labourers supported by the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) work at a construction site on the outskirts of Amritsar on July 23. | Photo: AFP
the story So Far: Women-led development still remains a core issue Announcements made by the Finance Minister in this year’s budgetThis commitment to women empowerment is reflected in the budget allocation for pro-women programmes, as reported by the Gender Budget Statement (GBS). GB is projected to reach 1% of GDP for the first time in 2024-25, and the total allocation for pro-women programmes currently stands at over Rs 3 lakh crore.
What is the reason for the increase?
Since GBS was first introduced in 2005-06, it has consistently accounted for an average of 5% of the total budgetary allocation, with minor fluctuations. This year is special as the share of allocation for pro-women schemes is about 6.8% of the total budget expenditure for 2024-25, which is much higher than the usual trends and marks a positive change from the status quo.
The increase in GB allocation is driven by two factors. A part of this increase is due to the newly added Part C in GBS, which reports pro-women schemes with less than 30% provision for women. In the agriculture sector, PM Kisan Yojana is 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 increase in Part A of GBS. Part A reports expenditure in schemes with 100% allocation for women.
Part A previously accounted for 15-17% of the total allocations reported in the GBS until Budget Estimates 2022-23. There has been a sudden increase in allocations to Part A from Budget Estimates 2023-24, taking the share of pro-women schemes to nearly 40% with 100% allocation for women (Figure 1).
This happened mainly due to a change in reporting, where Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana (PMAY) – rural and urban – started appearing in Part A instead of Part B. Programmes with 30-99% allocation for women are reported in Part B of the GBS. Hence, only a part of PMAY was reported earlier. Earlier last year, the entire allocation of ₹80,670 crore in PMAY for 2024-25BE has been reported under Part A, thereby increasing the allocation. Such reporting of PMAY may not be completely accurate as not all beneficiaries are women.
Have there been other cases of over/under reporting?
Over-reporting can also be found in other cases such as the PM Employment Generation Programme (PMEGP), which aims to assist entrepreneurs set up micro-businesses in the non-agricultural sector. GBS reported allocations of ₹920 crore, or 40% of the total allocation, to PMEGP but offered no explanation for such reporting.
On the other hand, a reduction in allocations often reduces the amount spent by programmes on women’s needs. For example, this year, for the first time, the entire allocation for 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 the 2023-24 budget, only 50% of the scheme’s total outlay was reflected in Part B of the GBS. This year, the GBS also correctly reports an increased allocation for the Ministry of Electronics and IT. But it fails to report pro-women allocations in schemes such as PM Vishwakarma, Svanidhi and Stand-up India for women entrepreneurs.
In another example, 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 with ₹28,888.67 crore under Part B which is 33.6% of its total outlay. It is important to note that women account for 59.3% of all person days under MGNREGA by December 2023, and should have received equal pay from the total MGNREGA budget, yet only 33.6% is shown in the GBS.
What next?
These discrepancies can be reduced by including explanations for the entries made in the GBS. Including explanations for allocations in the GBS will not only ensure accounting accuracy but will also help in gender audits and pave the way for better gender outcomes in government programmes. Improved reporting in the GBS has been advocated by experts for many years, which is reflected by the inclusion of the third part. The above discrepancies in reporting are a reflection of the fact that the GBS still does not have a scientific and systematic approach.
Efforts to reduce misreporting and improve the quality of GBS are evident, but there is still a long way to go. There is also a need to incorporate the argument that detailed reporting is not just an exercise in increasing the amount of reported allocations for women’s development – it is to ensure actual spending for women in all government programmes, which are well planned and designed to incorporate women’s needs from the very beginning. Gender sensitive budgeting is a powerful tool to reduce the gender gap in the economy.
Sona Mitra and Shruti Kutty work with IWWAGE, an initiative of LEAD at Krea University, and Sonakshi Choudhary works at The Quantum Hub (TQH Consulting).
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