February 13, 2002

    Institutionalised gender auditing of the Union Budget is imperative, so that it can be known which women oriented schemes are having desired impact and corrective steps can be taken if necessary. Besides, Budget allocation for the Department of Women and Child Development (WCD) is only 0.87% of the total (Rs. 1660 crore) which is obviously inadequate when the canvas being covered is so large. This was stated by Smt. Sumitra Mahajan, Minister of State for Human Resource Development, while leading a delegation of eminent women in a Pre-Budget meeting with the Finance Minister, Shri Yashwant Sinha. A pre-Budget meeting with women representatives was held for the first time.

    The Minister requested that the decade 2002-2012 should be declared as Women's Empowerment Decade to carry forward the tasks identified during the year of Women's Empowerment. Adequate resources should be provided for various programmes and activities for empowerment of women during this decade. She added that with the introduction of Domestic Violence Bill, the demand for women's support services will go up and, therefore, adequate resources should be provided for programmes like Counseling Centres, Short Stay Homes etc. These programmes should be thoroughly restructured and the professional standards of the services should be upgraded with better training for counsellors, programme managers etc.

    Other members present in the delegation underlined the need for augmenting the National Creche Fund to Rs. 100 crore from its present corpus of Rs. 20 crore, in order to institutionalise the child care system for working women. They also pointed out that the process of globalisation is throwing women workers from the formal sector, leading to casualisation of the women labour force. Appropriate programmes should, therefore, be taken up to upgrade the skill of women producers in informal sector so that they can face the challenges. Besides, some kind of insurance is also necessary to protect women who lose their jobs as a result of the liberalisation process.

    Regarding children, the delegates pointed out that the money being spent for children by the Government across all Ministries amounts to only 1.3 percent. It was also pointed out there is no separate Budget head for disabled children, there is one common allocation for all disabled people. The need for providing tax incentives to the private sector for getting involved in education, especially girl education, was also emphasised.

    The women delegates who attended the pre-Budget discussion include Smt. Sarijini Pritam; Ms. Enakshi Ganguli of Centre for Child Rights; Dr. Susheela Kaushik; Dr. Milly Chatterjee of Centre for Social Research; Ms. Ranjana Kumari of Gender Training Institute, Centre for Social Research; Ms. Meenakshi Lekhi, Lawyer, Supreme Court of India; Dr. Medha Naniwadekar; Smt. Jyoti Shukla; Smt. Sudha Murthy of Infosys Technologies; Dr. Veena Jha, UNCTAD representative; Dr. Madhubala, Faculty of Economics, IGNOU; Dr. Susheela Kaushik, Professor of Political Science in Delhi University; Dr. Aparna Basu, President, All India Women's Conference; Dr. Dwarkadas; Dr. Sarala Gopalan, AIWEFA; Ms. Margaret Antony of Indian Social Institute and Ms. Purnima Sethi.