COVER HINDI - Ministry of Women and Child Development

a lot of time and other resources but also confront serious
obstacles in availability of information. On the other hand,
the ex ante approach is much easier to apply and it also
has its own significance. In this approach, selection of a
particular scheme as child specific (and hence as a part
of the Child Budget) depends on the policy goal underlying
that scheme. Thus, in this ex ante approach, a scheme like
“Strengthening of Immunisation Programme &
Eradication of Polio” would be selected as child specific
as the government policy underlying the scheme
distinctively aims for improving the condition of children,
but a scheme like “Grants for All India Institute of Medical
Sciences, New Delhi” would not be considered a part of
the Child Budget as the policy underlying this public
expenditure does not specifically aim for better outcomes
for children. However, if any component of a scheme, such
as “Improvement in Working Conditions of Child/ Women
Labour”, is meant specifically for children, a part or whole
of the expenditure on it would be included in the Child
Budget depending on availability of information.
7.16 Taking into account the child rights discourse and,
in particular, the Convention on the Rights of the Child
(CRC), the analysis takes all persons up to the age of 18
years as children.
7.17 Keeping in mind the different needs of children in
our country, all programmes/ schemes included in the
Child Budget are categorized into four sectors, viz.:
— Child Development,
— Child Health,
— Child Education, and
— Child Protection.
7.18 However, this categorisation is subjective to some
extent as certain child specific schemes address multiple
needs of children and hence they can be considered for
more than one of the categories mentioned above. For
instance, a scheme like “National Programme for
Nutritional Support to Primary Education (or the Mid-day
Meal scheme)” may be considered as a part of Child
Education or as a part of Child Development (in the
analysis presented here this scheme has been included
under Child Education). But in order to avoid double
counting of child specific public expenditure every such
scheme (addressing multiple needs of children) is included
in any one of the four categories only.
7.19 The Union Government Ministries, which have child
specific schemes, are as given below:
— Women and Child Development
— Human Resource Development
— Health and Family Welfare
— Labour and Employment
— Social Justice and Empowerment
— Tribal Affairs
— Youth Affairs and Sports.
7.20 The data pertaining to budget outlays on child
specific schemes by the above-mentioned Ministries, used
in the analysis presented here, have been compiled from
the Expenditure Budget Volume II (Notes on Demands for
Grants) in the Union Budgets of the relevant years.
7.21 Analysis of the composition of total Child Budget
in Union Budget reveals important insights about the
sectoral priorities within the sphere of public policies for
children. The priorities given to the broad child-specific
sectors identified earlier, in terms of the magnitude of
public expenditure on them, should ideally be guided by
the intensity of the problems afflicting children in these
sectors. However, in practice, the total magnitude of public
expenditure on children might be heavily tilted in favour
of a particular sector (e.g. Education), while neglecting
one or more of the other equally crucial sectors (e.g.
Protection).
7.22 It may be noted here that the analysis presented here
has certain limitations, which are as given below.
— It does not capture the child-specific component in
some of the schemes funded by the Union
Government (e.g. the Accelerated Rural Water
Supply Programme [ARWSP], and the Total
Sanitation Campaign [TSC]) while in some cases it
makes a little over-estimation of child specific
spending by including the total outlays for certain
schemes (e.g. the outlays for Sports Authority of
India).
124 Annual Report 2006-07