KARNATAKA - of Planning Commission

Financing Human DevelopmentThe main aim of genderbudgets and gender auditsis not a separate budgetfor women, but betteranalysis of the incidenceof the expenditures andtax measures.To be complete, gender budgets require goodpay can and must be made to pay the real cost ofhigher education. This would reduce the sector’sdependence on state subsidies.Third, in the context of improving educationalperformance, while maximising existingresources, the educationally backward regionsrequire special focus. Transfers to districts are notnecessarily based on need and equity. Changingthe pattern of devolution and sanctioningmore resources to needy districts is necessary.The former would sensitise the rural localgovernments towards greater accountabilityfrom teachers and the latter would permit alarger allocation of resources to educationallybackward districts.PART IIIEngendering Public Spending:Gender Budget and AuditThe main aim of gender budgets and genderaudits is not a separate budget for women, butbetter analysis of the incidence of the expendituresand tax measures, as well as overall impact of abudget, improved targeting of public spending,and a clearer fi nancial basis for counteractingany potential negative consequences of thebudget. For the purposes of this discussion, weuse the terms ‘gender audit’ and ‘gender budget’interchangeably.The fi rst systematic audit of a governmentbudget for its impact on girls and women wasdone in Australia in 1984. Since then, ‘genderbudget exercises’, as they are called, have beenundertaken in a number of countries, chief amongthem being South Africa, Fiji, St. Kitts and Nevis,Barbados, Sri Lanka, Canada, UK, Mozambique,Tanzania and Uganda. This growing acceptanceof gender budgeting as a tool for engenderingmacroeconomics gained momentum after theFourth World Conference on Women at Beijingin 1995, and after the Commonwealth Women’sAffairs Ministerial meeting in New Delhi in2000. 23 quality data. In practice, of course, a number ofgender audits have yet to reach sophisticated levelsof analysis, not having access to the data needed toincorporate many of the elements. Many existingaudits include gender-aware policy appraisal andbenefi ciary assessment, but other elements requireeither a level of sensitisation of offi cials (for example,budget statements) or the kind of capacity foranalysis (for example, tax incidence) that are not yetavailable in women’s development departments orministries. However, even just benefi ciary incidenceis a good place to begin, and a number of insightsinto the gender impact of development can beobtained through this process.Evolution of gender audits in IndiaThe Ninth Five Year Plan (1997-2002) fi rstproposed a Women’s Component Plan underwhich both Central and state governments wereasked to ensure that at least 30 per cent of fundsand benefi ts were earmarked in all the womenrelated sectors, and that a holistic approach toempowering women should be followed. After2000, when a major conference on South Asiawas held, the National Institute of Public Financeand Policy (NIPFP) was commissioned to carryout research on a project on Gender RelatedEconomic Policy Issues. Following this, a StateBudgets Workshop was held in 2001, which ledto gender audit projects in different states, but theresults have not yet been collated.The NIPFP report classifi ed public expenditureinto three classes:1. Allocations under schemes and programmesspecifi cally targeted to women and girls;2. Pro-women allocations as part of thecomposite expenditure of schemes witha component for women, e.g. in socialsector ministries like health, family welfare,education, rural development, etc. wherewomen may benefi t, both from targetedschemes and also from a share in thecomposite expenditure;3. Pro-women allocations in specifi c composite23http://wcd.nic.in/chap11.htmschemes in other ministries where there istypically no or very little women’s componentas such.66