Gender Budget Need for a new Communication Policy for India

Vibhuti Patel Introduction: Budget impacts womens lives in several ways. It directly promotes womens development through allocation of budgetary funds for womens programmes and reduces opportunities for empowerment of women through budgetary cuts. Hence it is important to give top priority to public education about gender implications of budget through print and electronic media. It is a matter of deep regret that the media representation on gender-budget is poor in terms of coverage as well as content analysis. Gender Budget: The Media Perception: Trivialisation of womens concerns while discussing about the budget is happening because the media does not give voice to those who are actually dealing with this issue seriously and on a consistent basis. The standard approach has been to interview the finance ministers wife or get opinion pole of inarticulate women who cannot comment on the technical issues or the burning problems of mass of women whose survival struggles are greatly influenced by the budget. The media does not adopt such approach for the budget in general fiscal policy, budget deficit or budget surplus, revenue, budgetary concessions or restrictions, expenditure budget, guide to investors, so on and so forth. For all these issues they interview the experts, super-specialists, ministers, Members of Legislative Assembly and Members of Parliament. Only when it comes to engendering budget, the print and electronic media shuns the opinion of experts on the subject. For past 17 years, I have been doing electronic media monitoring on Gender budget. I have not come across a single radio or television programme on gender issues in the Union Budget, the budgets of the state governments or the budgets of the Panchayati Raj Institutions. Even the developmentalists who are vociferous about social sector budgets also ignore gender audit of the budget. In India, gender economists have painstakingly provided the gender audit of expenditure and revenue budgets. Still the media maintains conspiracy of silence on this important issue. Women are mostly mentioned as housewives/mothers in the official and mainstream medias budget discourse. As if women as workers, students, managers, artists, decision-makers, cultivators and entrepreneurs dont exist in our country! Economists Interested in Womens Issues Group was formed in 1981. As individual experts, the members of EIWIG are recognized as development economists by the government bodies and academic institutions. Their opinion is sought by the media on all topics but gender budget! In this article, I am making a humble effort to provide critical evaluation of media analysis on the issues concerning gender budget. When I watched experts analyzing budget on the television channels, it was crystal clear from their viewpoints that India was nothing more than the corporate world and the stock market. Leave aside gender budget, they didnt express any concern for the social sector budget and human development. In the ICE 1

(Information, Communication and Entertainment) age, accurate information on budgetary allocation for different programmes, projects and schemes for women in different ministries and departments can genuinely make contribution towards effective utilization of funds for programme implementation. Recent Media Coverage on Womens concerns vis--vis Budget: Awareness of the print media on womens stakes in the budgetary process was witnessed during 2001- The Womens Empowerment Year that projected Womens Empowerment Policy. One of the important items in the policy is the gender audit of budget and gender sensitive budgetary policy. The process of gender budgeting is the post-facto effort to dissect/analyse and thus offset any undesirable gender specific consequences of the previous budget. When the budget for 2001-2002 was presented by the finance Minister (FM) on 28-2-2001, the womens groups felt that the budgetary allocation for women was not consistent with the proclamations made in the Women Empowerment Policy. Even in the pre-budget meeting with the FM, the womens groups had expressed this sentiment. The Times of India (16-22002) stated in its news-report titled Women Seek Higher Budgetary Allocation that womens delegation met the finance minister to raise the allocation for women and child development to 5% of the total budget from that years budget, which was less than 1 % of the total. The Times of India also reported that the women maintained that there were too many programmes with too little money. The report also gave a summary of AIDWAs memorandum that expressed serious concern over the decline in the resources allocated for women and demanded more resources for women specific schemes. The Hindu (1-3-2002) published the excerpts of the Union Budget speech of the FM in which the paper has chosen to mention only one women specific item, i.e. In order to encourage the entry of large number of women into scientific professions, the government intends to institute at least 100 scholarships a year to be provided by the Department of Science and technology to women scientists and technologists. There were several schemes/ programmes that targeted women (as we will see in the section on Union Budget), but the paper has chosen to ignore. No wonder, the funds allocated for women remain unutilized in the absence of media publicity through official and commercial channels In response to the budget (2002-3), Dr. Arun Bal, Association of Consumer Action in Safety and Health said in his interview in the Times of India (1-3-2002), The allocations are more cosmetic than concrete. For instance, there is this lofty programme of providing food-grains to adolescent girls and pregnant and nursing mothers below the poverty line through Integrated Child Development Scheme. The intention may be good, but recent experiences in Melghat and Orissa show that the ICDS and PDS schemes dont reach out to the needy. The same news item had appeared in the Economic Times (1-3-2002) in the FMs speech (item number 71) in these words, Far too many children in our country suffer from malnutrition. Accordingly the prime minister announced a National Nutrition Mission in his independence speech on August 15, 200-1. Under this mission food grains at subsidized rates would be made available to adolescent girls and expectant and nursing mothers belonging to below poverty line families through ICDS structure. The most shocking aspect of the complete text of FMs budget speech is accompanied the coloured pictures of 9 women in veil, fully or partially covered and a super-imposition of the title Unveiling the budget. On the top of the front page of it, the FM in three different poses-speaking, brooding and watching. What a contrast! The Pro-active FM and passive women!!

May be due to criticism from the gender sensitive readers/ women journalists, this year the Economic Times (1-3-2003) has not used any sexist image along with the FMs budget speech in which women are mentioned only once in the context of Self Help Group Bank Linkage Programme for empowerment of women. In its special supplement on Budget and its Impact, the Economic Times has highlighted two women specific concerns, Cooking gas and kerosene prices likely to go up and duty cuts for gold and diamond trading. The page number 14 of the page focuses (pun intended) on women and body & women and budget and its title is GET PERSONAL. Only women who have faces in this page and who are giving their opinion on the budget are from the corporate world- Ms. Sudha Murthy (On elf the biggest shareholders of Infosys), Ms. Tina Ambani from the Reliance Group of Industries, Ms. Neerja Birla, Ms. Rohini Nilekani, Ms. Anuradha Mahendra, Ms. Smita Parekh and Ms. Tanya Godrej. In this page the matter deals with hard-core economics and the pictures that go along with them are provocative bordering to pornography. The combination is as follows: With a pie chart on Item wise distribution of Private Final Consumption Expenditure goes a photograph showing a backside of a young womans bare body with a caption- A Shoe String? There are some strings around her waist. With a bar chart on Cost of Living Index- Famous photograph from the Bond Movie where the actress Helle Barrie is lying on a bed in bikini and James Bond is exploring her belly/ naval. With a table on Private Per Capita Monthly Education Expenditure-Womans top half body with made up face and eyes covered with coloured glasses, spagetti stripes, bare hands and the rest covered with dollar currency-notes. With bar chart on Share of women in Organised Employment, a photograph of woman in ecstasy carried high by four moaning men. For fiscal policy, in What You See section, you have womans middles and her revealingly short blouse has eye on each breast and in What You Dont See section, the picture of an adult womans clean-shaven leg being watched by two male babies. The article on Gifts for Mummy, Papa & Chintu goes with equally funny cartoons of two women and one man. Even in the budget analysis, only those items that affect upper class women with purchasing power are included. One wonders, how did women journalists working for the paper allowed these photographs to be published with serious economic matters! This misogynist portrayal of women as bimbos in the Economic Times has been going on for past 7 years. Just four days before the presentation of the Union Budget (2003-04) the Economic Times (24-2-2003) published a report demanding more allocation of funds for higher education and for implementing schemes such as universalizing education. Though all official statistical evidences reveal acute problems in girls/womens education, this article is totally genderblind. Not a word for womens education or educational needs for girl-children! In an article on the budget (2002-03) published in The Asian Age (1-3-2003), Ms. Sonal Desai has only two lines on women specific concerns i.e. For housewives there is good news as utensils, pressure cookers, biscuits and sugar confectionery become cheaper and Housewives will be happy with cheaper kitchen items but the smile will be wiped out with the price of edible oil going up with 8% excise duty imposed on branded edible oil. As if only housewives (that too middle-class) matter so far as budget is concerned! (Compare this with the content of the section on Union budget in this article!).

This type of reportage makes it imperative that technical workshops on gender budget are a must for media personnel in which, womens agency is highlighted through gender aware writings and appropriate and decent images/pictures. The Economic Times (1-5-2003) published an article by Urmi A Goswami that says that the Department of Women and Child Development proposes to analyse both state and union budget over the past 10 years. The budgets of 00-01, 01-02, 02-03 and 3-04 have been analysed. Data from 16 states have been collected from the ministries of human resource development, social justice and empowerment, health and family welfare, labour, rural development, information and broadcasting and tribal affairs. Main problem faced by the department is lack of capacity to spend funds. Here comes the role of development oriented media to provide information on budgetary allocation under different headings, monitor the utilization pattern and help the people to exercise their right to information. Media Education on Gender budget by the Bretton Woods Institutions: The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), UNIFEM and INSTRAW are trying their best to organize capacity building workshops for the newspaper and television reporters on gender audit of budget. In this exercise, technical language and budget jargons are explained in simple narrative and through illustrations and case studies the effort is made to provide alternative budget that safeguards womens interests. Structural adjustment programmes and globalisation policies have directly increased womens unpaid work burden, thereby increased women- provided subsidy in the economy. Devaluation of income for the majority of masses as a result of new economic policy coupled with price rise, erosion of public distribution system and reduction of services offered by the public health system have made women bear disproportionate share of burden, because in the patriarchal families women have to shoulder responsibility of providing meals and looking after the sick family members. Hence women have high stakes in preventing an increase in the proportion of indirect taxes on essential commodities and in budgetary provisions to guarantee food security and health care. Hence, careful study of the working of PDS and local taxonomy on food security and impact on nutrition, health and health services of budgetary allocations is a must. (Patel, 2002) Womens Component Plan and Gender Budgeting: The planning Commission of India has always focused on womens issues as per the perceptions of their members on womens status within the economy. The First Five Year Plan (1951-1956) set up Central Social Welfare Board in 1953 to promote welfare work through voluntary organisations, charitable trusts and philanthropic agencies. The Second Five Year Plan (1956-1960) supported development of Mahila mandals for grass roots work among women. The Third, Fourth and Interim Plans (1961-74) made provision for womens education, pre-natal and child health services, supplementary feeding for children, nursing and expectant mothers. The Fifth Plan (1974-1978) marked a major shift in the approach towards women, from welfare to development. The Sixth Plan (1980-85) accepted womens development as a separate economic agenda. The Multidisciplinary approach with threepronged thrust on health, education and employment. The Seventh Plan (1985-1990) declared as its OBJECTIVE TO BRING WOMEN INTO THE MAINSTREAM OF NATIONAL DEVELOPMENT. The Eighth Plan (1992-1997) projected paradigm shift, from development to empowerment and promised to ensure flow of benefits to women in the 4

core sectors of education, health and employment. Outlay for women rose from 4 crores in the First plan to Rs. 2000 crores in the 8 th Plan. The Ninth Plan (1997-2002) stated that Empowerment of women was its strategic objective. It accepted the concept of Womens Component Plan to assure at least 30% of funds/benefits from all development sectors flow to women. The Tenth Five Year Plan (2002-2009) has suggested specific Strategies, policies and programmes for Empowerment of women Measurement of development has to go beyond achievement of GDP growth to indicators of distributive justice and their monitoring. Women headed households have to be specifically targeted, identifying added disadvantages in the rural and urban locations with reference to different parameters of deprivation. Formulation of Gender Development Indicators to measure Human Development and their use as a tool for monitoring development needs to be hastened. The Component Plan approach, which did not address compartmentalisation of government functioning should be replaced with a mandated approach of convergence of services at all levels of governance, through inter-sectoral committees of all Ministries/Departments at the Centre and the States with specific responsibility given to the Panchayats and Municipalities to administer at the grassroots level. The United Nations India has suggested that, To protect the gains of the past and ensure steady progress on indicators of social development and gender equality, and in order to give a fresh impetus to the process of women's empowerment, the Tenth Plan needs to take some bold policy initiatives.

Earmarking of funds for women under all major poverty alleviation programmes and maintenance of gender disaggregated records of implementation of all poverty alleviation programmes. Mandatory registration of all assets provided under government programmes (land, house, animals, production units) in the joint names of husband and wife. Intensified focus on rights education and capacity-building interventions for women in all strategic sectors, including health and reproductive health, agriculture, natural resource management, technology (including information technology) and legal awareness. Revision of regulatory framework to allow women's collectives to access institutional credit, obtain medium-term leases for cultivation on wastelands and common lands, bid for contracts for collection and sale of minor forest produce and other collective activities that will ensure household food security while regenerating the natural resource base.

Womens groups have demanded allocations for women-specific programmes of strategic nature to arrive at the desired goals in a shorter time span. They should target women of different age groups in terms of strategic interventions to take specific notice of adolescent girls, older women and women in difficult circumstances. Strategic gender tools like gender audits, gender impact assessments, gender analysis and gender budgeting to monitor implementation and impacts must be developed. Gender audit of plans, policies and programmes of various Ministries with pro-women allocations has to be a part and parcel of the monitoring process. There is a need for provisions in the composite programmes under education, health and rural development sectors to target them specifically at girls/women as the principal 5

beneficiaries and disaggregated within the total allocation. It may also be necessary to place restrictions on their re-appropriation for other purposes. To effectively attain population stabilisation, policies and plans need to empower women, promote their reproductive rights and involve men in reproductive decision-making and household responsibilities. Particular attention should be given to improve womens access to quality reproductive health services, including adolescent girls to counseling on reproductive health and sexuality issues. The strategy of organising women in self-help groups in the Ninth Plan period has paid good dividends for expanding micro-credit. This should be extended not only for reaching larger numbers of women but also for increasing awareness of and access to social development, apart from encouraging a process of convergence in the delivery of services in a decentralised set up. It is important to empower women's organisations and citizens groups to monitor enforcement of equal and minimum wages legislation by State governments, and the adherence to norms in poverty alleviation programmes. Professional Organisations including Universities should be included for undertaking monitoring, evaluation and research studies for identifying issues requiring special attention. . An outlay of Rs. 13780 crore has been earmarked in the central budget of the Department of Women and Child Development in the 10th Five Year Plan. They are as follows: Engendering Budget: To engender budget at the National level, it is important to make thorough study of the 5 Year Plans, Economic Survey, National Human Development Report and other important policy documents such as Towards Equality Report (1974), Shram Shakti Report (1988) and Women Empowerment Policy (2001) published by the Government of India and the state governments policies that guide programmes and budgetary allocations. This exercise helps us understand the working of macro policies in determining the fate of social sector under which budgetary allocation for women falls. In this paper, I would like to provide critical evaluation based on gender analysis of Human Development Report, 2002 Maharashtra, Maharashtra Policy for Women and Maharashtra Population Policy, 2010, to highlight priorities of the industrially advanced state. As per the Clause 5, Section 16 of National Commission of Women Act, 1990 the government is required to consult the commission in all policy matters pertaining to women. The same should apply at the state government level. National Human Development Report (HDR), 2001: The first HDR prepared by the Planning Commission of India reveals that gender disparity across the states has declined. The report has given Gender Equity Index (GEI) in which Bihar has the most abysmal record of 0.49.GEI of U.P. and Assam is between 0.5- 0.59. Maharashtra, Orissa, Rajasthan, West Bengal figure in the GEI brackets 0.6- 0.74. The group in the topmost bracket i.e. 0.75 + is composed of the North Eastern states except Assam, 6

Southern states and Himachal Pradesh. The HDR has not seriously taken into account, the declining sex ratio, especially the juvenile sex ratio (0-9 years) while estimating various development indices. The report has used 8 indicators to map the human development of states. It has provided diagrammatic representation of human development in the form of development radars comprising of 8 indicators namely-incidence of poverty, per capita consumption expenditure, life expectancy at age one, infant mortality rates, intensity of formal education, literacy rates, access to safe drinking water, proportion of households with pucca houses. The central thesis of HDR has been economic prosperity in terms of high per capita income does not necessarily lead to overall human development. Declining sex ratio in the prosperous states like Punjab, Haryana, Gujarat and Maharashtra prove the point. There is a need to focus more on the impact of budgetary allocations on womens well being and womens development. Union Budget: We have to examine budgetary provision for women during 2001-2002 and 2002-2003 within the matrices provided by the above mentioned policy documents. Women's status and women's bargaining power in the economy have a major bearing in the budgetary policy. Yearly analysis of the budget from the point of view of women is a must to enhance women's economic interest and socio-political standing in the economy. Analysis of budget from gender perspective makes us understand what are the nature, character and content of Womens share of development cake. Visibility of women in statistics and data system: For effective execution of macro policies such as National Perspective Plan for Women, Maharashtra State Women's Policy, we need an accurate data-base, area studies and time allocation studies, studies on energy expenditure and food consumption patterns among women of different communities, public utility services such as safe transport, public urinals, women's room in the office. Gender economists have done pioneering work to understand demographic profile of women and sex-ratio. Formulation of gender aware data system on literacy, education level, employment and earnings, health and well-being helps proper planning and policy making for empowerment of women.(Mukul Mukherjee, 1996) Inter -district, Inter-state and Cross country comparisions of women's empowerment are obtained from Gender related Development Index (GDI).(Martha Nussbaum, 2000) GDI owes its origin to its precursor, the HDI (Human Development Index), three main components of which are per capita income, educational attainment and life-expectancy which is a proxy for health attainment. Gender disparities are measured keeping these three indicators into consideration. "An additional measure, gender empowerment measure (GEM) has been formulated to take into account aspects relating to economic participation and decision-making by women. The indicators used in GEM are share in income, share in parliamentary seats and an index that includes share in administrative and managerial jobs and share in professional and technical posts." (K. Seeta Prabhu, P.C. Sarkar and A. Radha). This exercise is done with a philosophical understanding that without engendering, human development is endangered. (UNDP, 1995). Gender budget should address womens strategic1 and practical gender needs.2 a. Economic Profile of special needs population- Female headed households (Divorced, deserted, widowed, separated women), home based workers, women workers in the family enterprise, self-employed women, and women entrepreneurs.

b. Analysis of nature of occupational diversification among women, industrial classification- Implications of office automation, computerisation, flexi-time, jobsharing, tele working, and part time work.( Krishnaraj, K 1991) c. Effects of structural adjustment on Market segmentation- segmented factor market affects self-employed women directly when they want to buy raw material and other services. Segmented labour-market has direct bearing on the daily grind of women workers in the informal sector. Segmented product market makes unorganised women workers and women's collectives without networking insecure and vulnerable as sellers. ((Carr, M, Chen, M. and Jhabwala, R, 1998) d. Economic basis of customary laws and the family laws: When the customary laws get codified, we must be vigilant about the fact that women's interests are not sacrificed. Womens land rights and property rights need special mention at the time of codification of personal laws. Except for Andhra Pradesh and the North Eastern states, women have lost their customary land rights due to Land Reform Act. e. In mega development projects, which displace the native population, care must be taken to see to it that women get equal share in monetary compensation, land-rights and right to shelter. The same applies to the social and natural disaster management programmes. f. Political Economy of GET RICH QUICK formula in the name of dowry, sati (widow burning), Bhootali (witch hunting) for land grab, house-grab or to deprive women of their legitimate property rights should be examined with a consideration for avoiding violence against women.

g. Women's Empowerment by Men Decision Makers-In a situation where women's agency is virtually non-existent, the benevolent patriarch wedded to the cause of Women's empowerment become project coordinators. In such a situation, guidelines for Utilisation of Constituency Development Funds of Members of Parliament and Members of Legislative Assembly and Area Development Fund of corporators for women's education, employment, training, capacity building should be drawn by gender economists. h. WID- WAD- GAD: There has been a coexistence of three approaches for women's development in India. (Amarja Nerulkar and Vibhuti Patel, 1995). WID- Women in Development model explains the reasons for women being treated as beneficiaries of the crumbs thrown at them, in the margin of the economy, as consumers and an auxiliary labour force to be utilised in the crisis period and eased out the moment men are ready for take over. The WID discourse revolved around the economic growth paradigm. WAD- Women and Development model integrates women in the development work as active change agents. Affirmative action by the state and pro-active approach by the civil society through NGOs and women's groups are advocated by these models for empowerment of women against the forces of patriarchal class society. (Mira Seth, 2001). NGOs-voluntary organisations implementing this approach have become powerful force during 1990s. GAD - Gender and Development model is based on an understanding of gender relations and empowers the weak (he or she). Gender is socially constructed and gender relations are power relations.(Ranjani Murthy, 2001). Here power is an important analytical category. Explicit measures of gender inequalities are sex-ratio, literacy rates, health and nutrition indicators, wage differentials, ownership of land and property. "The implicit relations are those embedded in relations of power and in hierarchies 8

and are more difficult to measure. Located in the household, in custom, religion, and culture, these intra-household inequalities result in unequal distribution of power, control over resources and decision-making, dependence rather than self-reliance and unfair, unequal distribution of work, drudgery and even food."(Asha Kapur Mehta) Super women who are able to look after the interests of each and every stake group are survivors in this model. In the Indian context, gender relations are determined by the complex interplay of power relations based on class, caste, ethnicity and religion.(Desai, N and Thakkar, U 2001). Population Education programmes: Current affirmative efforts by Doordarshan on womens issues, through the afternoon transmission, spots on the girl child, family welfare, and so on, stem firmly from the traditional model of integrating women into development. This token attempts of add on and stir formulae are doomed to be ineffective just as this approach has failed to deliver tangible benefits to women., avers a veteran media activist. (Deepa Dhanraj, 2001) Educational radio and television programmes on gender budget should be given place of prominence. They based on scientific analysis and accurate information. More and more programmes should be broadcast and telecast in the regional languages so that the civil society and the decision makers of PRI institutions can utilise funds for womens development. Womens Concerns in the budgetary allocation should move from the periphery to the center in the mainstream as well as development oriented media.

Policy Implications for Mass Media/Communication

Budgets garner resources through the taxation policies and allocate resources to different sections of the economy. The Budget is an important tool in the hands of state for affirmative action for improvement of gender relations through reduction of gender gap in the development process. It can help to reduce economic inequalities, between men and women as well as between the rich and the poor. (NCAS,2003). Hence, the budgetary policies need to keep into considerations the gender dynamics operating in the economy and in the civil society. There is a need to highlight participatory approaches to pro-poor budgeting, green budgeting, local and global implications of pro-poor and pro-women budgeting, alternative macro scenarios emerging out of alternative budgets and interlinkages between gender-sensitive budgeting and womens empowerment. Serious examining of budgets calls for greater transparency at the level of international economics to local processes of empowerment. There is a need to provide training and capacity building workshops for decision-makers in the media institutes, schools of journalism, ministries of information and broadcasting at state and center levels and audio-visual media.