This year’s Union Budget will not be known for its schemes for women or marginalised sections, as it has ignored existing lacunae in the system and further reduced expenditure in this regard, said leading economic policy experts at an online panel discussion organised by the Department of Women’s Studies, Bharathidasan University on Wednesday.
Speakers at the meeting titled ‘Gender, the Marginalised and Union Budget 2022-2023’ the academics expressed their disappointment at the shrinking of investment in crucial areas such as employment generation and education. The stress on technology in schooling had also overlooked the prevailing digital illiteracy among women, especially in rural areas, they added.
The gender budget this year has further shrunk with its share in the expenditure declining from 4.4% to 4.3% for financial year 2023.
“The Union Budget from the perspective of women’s employment is not giving us any positive direction. There’s no acknowledgement of their employment crisis and healthcare burden,” said N. Neetha, professor, Centre for Women’s Development Studies (CWDS), New Delhi, said.
The budget’s preference for capital investment in infrastructure projects would not benefit female workers as compared to males, she added. “Even though the construction industry in recent years has improved, women’s presence in it has declined. In the service sector, most of the budget is going towards creating a digital university and ‘one class, one TV channel’ initiative. It may not lead to increased employment opportunities for women in the education sector. In fact we are seeing a decline in some segments,” Ms. Neetha said.
“So much of what we were expecting in the Budget was absolutely missed out. The problems that began with the pandemic continue to persist; the Finance Minister seemed to understand that the economy had been hit by the public health crisis. But it is really difficult to understand how the projection of 9% growth is to be achieved. It seems to be focused on providing benefits to the private sector,” said Sona Mitra, IWWAGE in LEAD, Krea University, New Delhi.
Ms. Mitra also pointed out that providing basic services like vaccination and direct benefit transfers in digitally-enabled platforms was ignoring the gender divide in digital literacy.
“The government has to decide whether it wants to maintain its power, or its people. Within poverty, job loss, economy and regressive ideologies that show up as violence against women, you find a few corporate elites emerging. One alternative was to change the narrative, by taxing the super-rich so as to increase public spending, but this hasn’t happened,” said Ishita Mukhopadhyay, professor, Department of Economics, Calcutta University.
Kamatachi Sundaramurthy, senior researcher, Social Watch, Chennai and Nirmala Padmanabhan, dean of Extension and Incubation, St. Teresa’s College Ernakulam also spoke. The meeting was hosted by N. Manimekalai, head, Department of Women’s Studies, Bharathidasan University.
