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By: Anjali Raj

Gender Responsive Budgeting and Development
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Abstract:
The paper critically analyses the development process with special focus on Gender
Responsive Budgeting (GRB). The paper starts with description of the concept of GRB
and shows that how and when the Government of India have adopted GRB. It further
claims about the discrepancy related to GRB and how it has failed to achieved its
desired goal. In the next section, using three texts i.e. The Paradox of Gender
Budgeting, Sieving Budget for Gender, and Building Budgets from Below, I have
discussed about the problems related to GRB and have critically analyzed the arguments
of the texts. Further, I have raised some conceptual questions related to GRB, which
were not being raised by the texts. In the concluding section, using the conceptual
problems of GRB, I have tried to problematize the whole concept of development.

Full Text:
In recent years, the aim of development process has become more inclusive than ever
before. It is being observed that development policies affect both men and women
differently, so it is assumed that a development policy could not be gender blind and
Gender Responsive Budgeting is result of the same approach of development. In the
Ninth Plan (1997-2002), with the adoption of Women Component Plan, the Government
of India, for the first time, provided gender sensitive allocations. However, it is the
National Institute of Public Finance and Policy (NIPFP) which formally used the concept
of gender budgeting by analyzing the Union Budget for the first time. The study shows
the gender in-sensitization in the allocations related to women specific policies. The
study concluded that gender incidence of the public expenditure is difficult to measure in
precise quantitative terms, since the bulk of the expenditures are meant to provide
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services that are essentially public in nature (Goyal, 2006: 5). It is important to
understand that gender responsive budgeting does not mean to have separate budget
which would deal with gender issues alone, but rather it is an attempt at dissecting
budget for its gender specific impact since gender based differences and discrimination
are built into the entire social- economical- political fabric of almost all societies (Das &
Mishra, 2006: 3285). According to International Development Research Centre, Gender
budget initiatives analyze how governments raise and spend public money, with the aim
of securing gender equality in decision-making about public resource allocation; and
gender equality in the distribution of the impact of government budgets, both in their
benefits and in their burdens. The impact of government budgets on the most
disadvantaged groups of women is a focus of special attention (IDRC 2001).

As the definition explains, the main purpose of Gender Responsive Budgeting is to
empower women by providing them good educational and health access, to give them
more voice in decision making process by providing more allocations and eventually, to
provide gender justice. In short, gender mainstreaming was the main target of
Government of India, which was to be achieved through Gender Responsive Budgeting.
Even though both tenth, eleventh and twelfth plan have discussed how gender responsive
budgeting should be applied, it is being noticed that target of Gender Budgeting is still
not being achieved, there is still a gap in the social, educational, economic and political
status of man and woman. Despite so many policies, women are still at the vulnerable
condition and gender equality and equity is yet to be achieved.
To understand this discrepancy, I have taken up three different texts (in the following
section) related to gender budgeting which would highlight the problems related to the
same.

Critical Analysis of GRB:
The first important step of GRB is to have gender sensitive resource allocations. For any
policy, to come into action, it requires finance and government is supposed to provide
appropriate allocations in order to achieve its goal of gender equity. However, in the
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article The Paradox of Gender Budgeting, the authors Bhumika Jhamb, Yamini Mishra
and Navanita Sinha have highlighted that even though the government claims to reduce
the gender gap in society through gender budgeting, but there is a constant decline in
Gross Budgetary Support (GBS) in proportion to the total expenditure of union budget.
There is a significant decrease in the projected Gross Budgetary Support for Women
and Child Development in the 12th Five-Year Plan. The article, therefore, questions that
how is it possible to achieve gender equality and various other gender commitments,
which were proposed during 11th Five-Year Plan, when there is not enough financial
support? And for that matter, does Government even care for womens empowerment or
is it just pacify its women citizens? Author of the article have raised serious questions
which are important to understand to the basic problems of GRB. However, they do not
question the characteristics of the policies that are being formulated in the name of
GRB. For example, all the policies related to child development are being formulated
under GRB and these policies are understood as women-friendly, but these policies
reinforces the patriarchal notion of motherhood and women as care-giver. Also, authors
failed to question that why the policies related to womens health are formulated only to
solve the pregnancy related problems. As if a single woman who is not a mother, does
not fall ill or she does not need states help. Similarly, the policies related to family
planning, contraception are also considered women-friendly policies, but these are the
policies which further confine women into their set roles and duties. The objective here
is not to claim that there is no need of these policies but to show that the authors have
failed to question these kind of formulation which somehow glorifies the various aspects
of patriarchy.

Second important step is the assessment of the policies, which are supposedly women-
friendly. In the article Sieving Budget for Gender, authors, Nirmala Banerjee and
Maithreyi Krishnaraj have discussed about Gender budgeting exercises, which is to assess
the gender biases in existing budgetary measure and the commitment of state to correct
it. Authors made it clear that these exercises does not demand for separate budget or
policy to deal with gender related issues, in fact it is to highlight the biases that are
inherent in the mainstream budget and to suggest ways to change the overall outlook of
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all government policies towards the promotion of true equality between genders (Banerjee
& Krishnaraj, 2004: 4788). The authors have discussed about the inefficiency of
government by highlighting the gap between policy making and policy implementation.
They have highlighted that how despite of having several women specific policies, the
state could not have achieved gender equality and to resolve this gender budgeting
exercise is important, as it would provide women information about the content of
existing government policies. And by using this knowledge, women would be able to
confront policy makers and they could be demand for changes in policies according to
their need. And this could be possible only between a close interaction between women
studies scholars and activists of womens movements and policy makers. Only when
policy makers would be able to come up with policies as per the need of women and
this process should begin at the very first stage when schemes are being designed and
investment decisions are made. Therefore, in this article, the main argument of authors is
to change the method of policy formulation and to include women studies scholars and
activists from womens movement in policy making procedure. Even though, the position
sounds egalitarian and looks like it would represent womens needs in a better way, but
there are still some problems with this kind of approach. Firstly, the approach assumes
that scholars and activists represent every section of society or it is constituted of
members which would represent every class and caste. It failed to understand the
hierarchy that exists within academics and activism. It failed to question that how an
urban educated scholar would represent the need of a woman from marginalized area.
Secondly, it establishes the fact that only a woman can represent the need of another
woman, without analyzing the class and caste of the category called women. Thirdly, it
does not discusses the problem related to policy implementation and assumes that a good
policy making procedure would bridge the gap between policy making and policy
implementation. Lastly, it does not talk about providing training to those women, who
are already in power, in order to enable them to participate in policy making process,
rather than creating a boundary between academics and ground politics.
Last point of my argument has been dealt in the next article, Building Budgets from
Below, in which authors, Ahalya S Bhat, Suman Kolhar, Aarathi Chellappa and H.
Anand, have discussed about the possibilities and difficulties of gender budgeting from
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the side of those women who are in power. The article shows that through the
reservation, women of rural areas have got chance to participate in decision making
process of local self-governments, but due to lack of training, women are being not able
to use this opportunity for their development. However, the article is not the claiming
that women lack the capacity to understand the issues, in fact it has demonstrated that
women do understand their problems, they do not lack the capacity to participate in
budget building process. The only thing they lack is training, which would further enable
them to understand the budget process and then, to propose their demand effectively.
The purpose is to enable women, who are in power, to understand budgeting process in
a formal sense, not only at local level but also at state level, in order to resolve the
issues which are important for development. However, the article does not describe the
nature of training, who will provide these training to those women who are in power at
local self-government level and does not also problematize the process of training itself.
Authors show enormous faith in governmental training, while neglecting the fact the state
also promotes different practices that are patriarchal in nature. They failed to doubt the
intention of state, which might train these women in such a way that they themselves
would become patriarchal agents.
All these three texts have presented a critical analysis of the concept called Gender
Responsive Budgeting, however there were some problems with each of the texts that
have been mentioned above. But, if we take the analysis of all three texts together, we
would realize that all three are working within the binary of policy making and policy
implementation and constructing their arguments within the same structure. None of them
are problematizing the notion of Gender Responsive Budgeting itself.
The concept of Gender Responsive Budgeting has been based on the assumption that
economic inequalities is the only source of gender gap that exists in society and this gap
can be reduced by formulating and implementing women-friendly policies. But, the
nature of these policies are doubtful itself. Firstly, these policies assumes that inequality
exists only in public sphere not in private sphere, as they hardly talk about familial
reforms. Secondly, the way GRB has been conceptualized, it further widen the public
private divide. These policies also reinforces patriarchal norms and values (that I have
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discussed earlier in this text). Also, these policies sometimes ignore the caste and class
dimension while claiming to be gender sensitive. Thirdly, the way GRB has been
formulated, it takes women as unified single category, while ignoring the diversities
with the category called women. Fourthly, the term gender in GRB, signifies nothing.
It only represents the needs of good women, while it ignores the marginalized sections
within male (and also female) counterpart, for example, it does not talk about the special
provisions for gay men, hijras and sex workers. Lastly, the whole concept of GRB,
bestows so much power in the hands of state and its apparatus. With each laws and
policies, our lives are being more controlled by the State. However, this is not to say
that we do not need laws and welfare policies, but the main point here is to highlight
that how the states efforts are problematic in their own structure. On the one hand
these policies talks about the so called upliftment(the term in itself is problematic) and
on the other hand these are further creating the binary of self and other, the binary of
we and them, the binary of center and margin. However, this is not to claim that one
should not recognize that there exists a gender gap and there should be no effort for the
betterment of the condition of women, but the point is to change the whole relation
between self and other, to change the relation between margin and center instead of
creating another center.
Conclusion:
Gender Responsive Budgeting is just one tool to include women in development process.
Similarly, there are various gender sensitive schemes and projects, which were being
initiated to deal with the gender inequality that exists in society. But the questions is
why, even after so many attempts, it does not have achieved its goal. There must be
some problems with the developmental approach. Firstly, we mostly see development in
only economic terms and ignores the socio-political aspect of development. Even within
the economic aspect, the productive and reproductive aspects has not been dealt properly.
Further, it completely ignores the private sphere of life and does not takes familial
aspects into consideration, while ignoring the fact that most of the gender inequalities
originate within familial setting. Most of the development policies are basically promoted
by liberalized economy and thus, the concept of development has been shaped within the
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same theory of liberalization. Therefore, our development process uses reformative
approach, proposed by liberalization. It only introduces various laws, schemes, policies
which would reform the gender roles, but the problem is that it does not even talk
about changing power relations between two genders and this is why, we need
reformulate the whole notion of development (which includes almost all aspects of life)
in order to change the power relation between the self and the other i.e. the male and
the female respectively.
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References:

Banerjee, Nirmala, and Maithreyi Krishnaraj. "Sieving budgets for gender." Economic
and Political Weekly (2004): 4788- 4791.

Banerjee, Nirmala, and Poulomi Roy. "What Does the State Do for Indian Women?"
Economic and Political Weekly (2004): 4831- 4837.

Bhat, Ahalya S., et al. "Building Budgets from Below." Economic and Political Weekly
(2004): 4803- 4810.

Das, Subrat, and Yamini Mishra. "Gender Budgeting Statement: Misleading and
Patriarchal Assumptions." Economic and Political Weekly (2006): 3285-3288.

Goyal, Anjali. "Womens Empowerment through Gender Budgeting-A review in the
Indian context." Unpublished Concept Note. New Delhi: Department of Women and
Child Development, Government of India (2006).

Jhamb, Bhumika, Yamini Mishra, and Navanita Sinha. "The Paradox of Gender
Responsive Budgeting." Economic & Political Weekly 48. 20 (2013): 35.
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Mishra, Yamini, and Navanita Sinha. "Gender Responsive Budgeting in India: What has
Gone Wrong" Economic & Political Weekly 47. 17 (2012): 51.

Verma, Vidhu. "Engendering development: Limits of feminist theories and justice."
Economic and Political Weekly (2004): 5246- 5252.



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