The All India Democratic Women’s Association (AIDWA) sharply criticises the Union Budget presented by the Finance Minister today as high on rhetoric and low on its content. Although proclaimed by the Finance Minister to be a budget for farmers and to support the social sector, in reality, this is a Budget oriented towards the business and corporate sector, ignoring the need to step up measures to tackle rural distress, the crisis in employment and burgeoning inflation, particularly the sharp increases in the prices of food and essential commodities. The big show made about alleviating the distress of poor women by making an allocation of Rs 2000 crores towards meeting the initial cost of 1.2 crore LPG connections is misleading, since these are barely 8% of BPL households. Many households cannot afford the current market linked price of Rs 600 per cylinder. The rationing of cylinders and the implementation of the Direct Cash Transfer scheme are already causing much hardship to several poor and middle-class households.
Agricultural production in India today rests on the shoulders of rural women. They constitute the dominant share of workforce engaged in agriculture. However, in the name of supporting the farmers, this budget has inflicted a huge fraud on them. The Finance Minister made a tall claim that his “Transformative Budget” will double incomes of farmers over the next five years, but there is nothing in the budget about how this will be achieved. In reality the plan allocation for agriculture at Rs 20400 crores is lower than the 2014-15 plan allocation of Rs 22309 crores. The Finance Minister has cleverly classified a non-plan allocation of Rs.15000 crores to the Ministry of Agriculture under a head meant for transferring funds to commercial banks to compensate them for providing subsidised credit to agriculture, and showed it as an an increase in spending on agriculture. But these are funds meant for banks and they will not go to the farmers. Allowing 100 per cent FDI in rural markets will have a disastrous impact on small farmers, especially women. This will expose Indian agricultural markets to monopsonistic control of large multinational companies. With declining work opportunities for women especially in rural areas due to the widespread drought, there was a need to increase the allocation for the MNREGA. However, the nominal increase of just 7.7% over revised allocations means that there is no real increase after taking into account inflation.
The “Gender budget” which estimates how much of the total spending goes towards benefiting women, shows no increase whatsoever. The revised estimate for 2015-16 is 4.55 per cent while the budget allocation for this year 4.58 per cent. Last year the allocations to the Ministry of Women and Child Development were slashed from Rs. 21194 crores to less than half - Rs. 10382 crores. After the Finance Minister faced huge criticism from the Ministry of Women and Child Development, there was an upward revision and the figures show disbursement of Rs. 17352 crores. However, this year’s allocation is roughly at the same level - Rs. 17408 crores, which is considerably lower than previous allocations. The Modi government only pays lip service to the welfare of mothers and the girl child (maa and betiyaan) while the trend to cut actual spending continues. The ICDS continues to face a cut in allocations; after heavily slashing budgetary allocations to Rs 8000 crores in 2015-16, actual disbursement was Rs. 15394 crores last year. But the allocation this year is Rs.14000 crores, significantly lower than the expenditure in the last few years even in nominal terms. Over the last two years, the NDA Government has drastically cut down allocations to the Mid Day Meal Scheme. In 2014-15, the allocation for the scheme was Rs. 13152 crores. This year, the allocation is only Rs. 9700 crores.
In fact all the social sector allocations show the same picture. The allocations to school education, from Rs. 39039 crores last year to Rs. 40000 crores this year implies a decline in real terms, as with the case of higher education from Rs. 15855 crores to Rs 16500 crores this year. This budget is notable because it is clearly formalises a major shift from public provisioning of health to a model of insurance based provisioning of health care through private-sector health providers. It represents nothing but diversion of budgetary allocations on public health to subsidising private sector health providers and the pharmaceutical industry. Instead of free provisioning of medicines from public health facilities, government is proposing to limit its role to running just 3000 stores for distribution of subsidised medicines.
The provision of automation facilities for 3 lakh Fair Price Shops and the opening of more and more ATMs and mini-ATMs in rural areas signals a further drive towards introducing cash transfer in the PDS as per the recommendations of the Shanta Kumar Committee report. This will be further strengthened by the legal sanction that the Modi government intends to give Aadhaar. Even in nominal terms, the allocation on food subsidy has been cut from last year’s revised estimate by 3.4 per cent. What one expected was a strengthening of the PDS and introduction of more commodities at controlled prices to protect women from steeply increasing prices of essential commodities.
Overall, the budget reflects a deep callousness about the widespread prevalence of poverty, malnourishment and illiteracy among women and children, particularly from deprived sections and SC, ST communities. Ever since the Modi government came to power, it has worked to destroy the system of planning that was the bedrock of economic policy making in India. It started with winding up the Planning Commission and replacing it with Niti Aayog. Today, the Finance Minister announced that from the next year, the Government will do away with the distinction of ‘Plan’ and ‘Non-Plan’ expenditures. What this actually means is that it will no longer prioritise and orient its economic policies towards developmental objectives like the alleviation of poverty, or focussing on the special needs of women, dalits, tribals and other deprived sections of society through the allocation of budgetary resources for them. This budget clearly upholds the interests of the market. It has no place for women
