New Delhi: Reaching out to a key support base, the Narendra Modi government has made a push for increasing women’s participation in the workforce in the first budget of its third term.
Presenting the budget Tuesday, Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman reiterated her government’s commitment to “enhancing women’s role in economic development”. Referring to women as one of the “four castes”, she said there was a need to focus on them.
The minister said the Centre would facilitate the setting up of women’s hostels in collaboration with industry, and establishing crèches to facilitate higher participation of women in the workforce. “In addition, the partnership will seek to organise women-specific skilling programmes, and promotion of market access for women’s self-help groups (SHG) enterprises.”
The budget announcement is in line with the Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) poll promise in its manifesto for the 2024 Lok Sabha elections. The BJP had promised that it would ensure higher participation of women in the workforce and in the field of sports, enhance market access for women SHGs and empower three crore SHG members to become ‘lakhpati didis’.
However, while there is a push for “women-led development” across the government, the budgetary allocation to the women and child development ministry — which has several schemes aimed at the protection and empowerment of women — has seen only a marginal increase from last year, to Rs 3.1 lakh crore.
The Economic Survey 2023-2024, which was tabled in Parliament Monday, highlighted how the element of women-centricity in government initiatives had been rising and was visible in the expanding gender budget.
The report said that Rs 97,134 crore (budget estimate) was allocated in FY 2013-14 on schemes for the welfare and empowerment of women. The amount allocated has consistently increased over the years, reaching Rs 3.1 lakh crore in FY 2024-25.
“This shows a 38.7 per cent rise in the Gender Budget Statement (GBS)78 vis-à-vis FY24 BE and a 218.8 per cent increase over FY14 (budget estimate),” the economic survey said.
It also said that female participation has been “quite encouraging” when it comes to entrepreneurship through start-ups and Stand-Up India (scheme that facilitates bank loans between 10 lakh and 1 crore to at least one SC or ST borrower, and at least one woman borrower per bank branch to help them set up a greenfield enterprise) initiatives.
“Around 68 percent of the loans have been sanctioned to women entrepreneurs under PM Mudra Yojana, and 77.7 percent of the beneficiaries under Stand-Up India are women, as of May 2024,” the report said.
Marginal increase in women and child development
Citing issues affecting women such as lack of basic necessities including sanitation and piped water, as well as matters of menstrual hygiene, safety, and economic and political equality of opportunity, among others, the report said, “Transitioning from women’s development to women-led development requires a 360-degree review of the issues and a sincere, pragmatic approach to tackling them.”
Initiatives such as Mission Shakti, undertaken by the Ministry of Women and Child Development, play a key role in the empowerment of women. But this financial year, there has been a marginal increase in the budgetary allocation of the ministry. The ministry was allocated Rs 26,092.19 crore for 2024-2025 as against Rs 25,488.75 crore in budget estimates for 2023-2024.
Mission Shakti, one of the key schemes aimed at strengthening interventions for women safety, is said to be crucial to realise the government’s commitment for women-led development by addressing issues affecting women on a “life-cycle continuum basis”. The budgetary allocation for the mission, which has two sub-schemes, in 2024-2025 (Rs 3,145 crore) is almost the same as the budget estimate of 2023-2024.
SAMARTHYA, a sub-scheme of Mission Shakti, is aimed at improving the accessibility of various government services available for women at various levels through reinforcement and convergence to enable development and empowerment of women. The components of this sub-scheme are Paalna – National Creche Scheme, Hub for Women Empowerment, Gender Budgeting, and Research/ Skilling/ Training/Media Advocacy, among others.
The budget allocation for the sub-scheme is Rs 2,516.97 crore for 2024-2025 as against Rs 2,581.96 crore in the budget estimate of 2023-2024.
(Edited by Radifah Kabir)
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