Allocation for Gender Budget rises by 23% in 2023-24, 'Misison Shakti' takes a hit

The gender component this year takes into account allocations across 30 union ministries and departments and 5 Union Territories

The allocation for the Gender Budget rose by a robust 23 per cent, a significant hike from 11 per cent in 2022-23, even as the allocation for the union ministry for women and child development saw a negligible increase of 1 per cent. The increase came with a caveat – it accounted for the entire allocation for the PM Awas Yojana.

In her speech for the Union Budget 2023-24, finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman announced a one-time new small savings scheme for women – the Mahila Samman Savings Certificate – available till March 2025 that will allow a deposit facility of upto ₹2 lakh for two years at fixed interest rate of 7.5 per cent.

Allocation under the gender budget rose from ₹1,71,006.47 crore last fiscal to ₹2,23,219.75 crore this fiscal, and the gender component accounted for 4.9 per cent of the entire Budget, an increase from 2022-23 when it accounted for 4.23 per cent. The gender component this year takes into account allocations across 30 union ministries and departments and five Union Territories.

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The allocation for the union women and child development ministry increased from ₹25,172.28 crore in 2022-23 to ₹25448.75 crore this fiscal, marking a hike of 1.08 per cent.

The allocation for Mission Shakti, under which the ministry’s key schemes for protection of women including the Beti Bachao Beti Padhao, Women Helpline, One Stop Crisis Centre as well as Pradhan Mantri Matru Vandana Yojana come under, fell 1.2 per cent from ₹3,184.11 crore last year to ₹3143.96 crore this year.

Shruti Ambast, Senior Policy Analyst at the Centre for Budget and Governance Accountability (CBGA) says that this is a continuation of a general trend of underutilisation. “In several key schemes, there is underutilisation like in previous fiscals; for instance in the Mission Shakti component, the actual spend was ₹1,946.93 crore,” she adds.

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Part A of the Gender Budget that counts allocation for schemes meant exclusively for women, went up a whopping 70 per cent – from ₹26,772.89 crore last year to ₹88044.21 crore this year. The lion’s share went to the rural housing scheme Pradhan Mantri Awaas Yojana which had an allocation of ₹54,487 crore. It must be noted that the actual spend under part A in 2022-23 as per the revised estimates was ₹90,564.35 crore.

Ambast questioned why the Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana was included in this component entirely, since women do not benefit women exclusively from it. “Many other schemes like the Jal Jeevan Scheme and Mudra, which have significantly benefited women are not part of the Gender Budget, which indicates that this is not a complete indicator on how much is spent on women and how is the spent distributed,” Ambast said.