All India Democratic Women’s Association expresses its deep disappointment with the budget of 2014-15. The Modi led BJP government’s first budget comes at the a time when inflation and price rise has reached unimaginable proportions and the violence against women has been rising at an alarming rate. The provisions of the Railway Budget threaten to push up fares and cost of essential commodities, thus placing a further burden on women. In this context the Modi government has been warning the common people that they will have to wait for ‘achche din’ and swallow the bitter pill in order to bring the country out of the mess left by the UPA government. It appears from the budget proposals that the people are in for a long wait.
At the start of his speech the finance minister stated that ‘The people of India have voted for change. The verdict represents the exasperation of the people with the status quo. The people below the poverty line are anxious to free themselves from the curse of poverty.” Given this context the finance minister has given himself the task of breaking away from the status quo and pushing for change. However far from doing this, the budget of 2014-15 follows the earlier UPA budgets in reducing expenditure on social welfare schemes and pushing for economic reforms that benefit the corporate sector. In fact The FM has pushed corporate neo-liberal reforms to the next level by pushing for greater FDI in insurance and defense, and promoting public-private partnership and corporate social responsibility in almost every major infrastructural and social welfare sector. In effect it amounts to pushing for withdrawal of the government from the social sector.
In overall terms, the social sector expenditure has decreased from 10.8 percent in 2013-14 to 4.42 percent of the total budget in 2014-15. In terms of the percentage of the total planned expenditure it has come down from 26.7 percent in 2013-14 to 16.7 percent in 2014-15. Further the expenditure for the Ministry of Women and Child Development constitute just 1.1 percent of the total budget which is a decrease by 0.1% from 2013-2014. The total gender budget constitutes only 5.4 percent of the entire budget in 2014-15, which constitutes a 0.2 percent decrease from the last budget of 2013-14. Within this budget the allocation for the 100% women specific schemes has in fact come down by 9.8 percent.
Though there have paltry increases in the schemes with 30 percent allocation for women, these increases are barely enough to take care of the rising prices. For example gender based allocations in education have gone up by 9.9 percent in Sarva Siksha Abhiyan, by 12.9 percent over last years budget for MNREGS and 14.9 percent for ICDS. But these small increases are not even enough to take care of the rising costs after inflation, leave alone expanding the schemes. In overall terms, they are not sufficient to implement the basic rights provided under the RTE and MNREGS Acts and the Supreme court directives for universalizing the ICDS.
Despite its much touted commitment to the security of women, the budget betrays little concern for the security of women. The WCD Minister had stated that she was going to focus on the establishment of rape crisis centres throughout the country. But the total allocations for rape crisis centres has decreased from 69.50 Cr to 47.20 Cr. At the same time the allocations to tackle domestic violence have been reduced from 59.50 Cr to 42 Cr where as the scheme for hostels for working women does not get more than a paltry increase of 10 Cr. The scheme for assistance for shelter for single women gets a paltry 18 Crores!
In terms of its commitment to the tackling malnutrition of women it is significant that the government makes virtually no commitment towards the implementation of the food security act. Rather the budget speech makes ominous noises that talk about taking a more targeted approach and restructuring the PDS system. Though the food subsidy has been maintained for the present, the proposed expenditure commission which promises to restructure subsidies may work at cutting this support.
Finally, the budget apparently envisages practicing ‘cooperative federalism’ by restructuring the expenditure pattern of the schemes. However such restructuring is merely notional as the budget does not provide enough money to ameliorate the problems of women and families of the weaker sections. Rather, the shift would weaken the commitment of the Central government towards overall development of its people, and so- called “less governance” by the Modi Government will place a greater burden on the women of this country.
