CHENNAI: The gender budget statement released on Monday stated that Rs 1.22 lakh crore was allocated for welfare of women under various schemes in which the women beneficiaries ranged from 30-100 %.
This includes Rs 27,915 crore under Part A - schemes that are targeted only for women, Rs 31,976 crore in Part B - schemes where the women beneficiaries range from 40-99% and Rs 55,739 crore in Part C - schemes in which at least 30% beneficiaries are women. However, no list or details about the schemes under Part C were mentioned.
“The gender budget statement of the central government as well as several other state governments has only parts A and B. The Part C introduced by the Tamil Nadu government only inflates the amount spent on the welfare of women in the state without reflecting the reality, as it is much higher than the first two parts,” said S Kamatchi from Social Watch, Tamil Nadu.
Endorsing the view, Bimla Chandrasekaran, director of Ekta Resource Centre for Women, said gender budgeting serves no purpose if one of the major sections does not have any specifics and is used just to inflate numbers.
Activists have also demanded the government to release an exclusive document for the gender budget statement which is now part of the appendices to the budget memorandum. Across the country, at least 11 states have been releasing it as a separate document.
They also want the state government to make a performance-oriented statement with details on the number of women beneficiaries to ensure schemes are not added to categories without any basis. Earlier this month, more than 87 activists signed a joint statement pressing for these demands.
According to the standard operating procedure released by the central government for gender budgeting, the government has to conduct situational analysis of women in the state, following which the departments have to conduct pre-budget consultations with the stakeholders to bring out a performance-based gender budget statement.
Recently, the Comptroller and Auditor General had advised the Kerala government to bring out performance-based gender budgeting statements, failing which the objective of gender budgeting would be defeated.
However in Tamil Nadu, the government is yet to form gender budgeting cells in many departments which are responsible for analysing the schemes. Despite a government order released in July, 2022, only five including the social welfare department out of more than 40 departments have gender budgeting cells, as of December, 2023, according to an RTI reply.
However, the women’s groups have welcomed the move to include the accounts, budget estimates and revised estimates of 2023-24 in the statement as the previous six statements had only the budget estimates of that single financial year.
