Determining Gender Budgeting in Multi-Level Federalism

Abstract

Gender budgeting is a public policy innovation intended to transform governments’ objectives to women’s empowerment into budgetary commitments. In the multi-level fiscal federalism in India, the political economy process of gender budgeting in India has involved four distinct phases - innovative knowledge networking, building institutional structures, reinforcing state capacity and strengthening the accountability mechanisms, at national and subnational levels. Against these policy processes, we have estimated the sector-wise quantum of gender budgeting in India emphasising the statistical invisibility of the care economy. The State-wise equally distributed equivalent (Xede) estimates of gender development showed that the state of Kerala tops the scale 0-1 scoring 0.72. Though the link between gender budgeting and these Xede scores is beyond the scope of the paper, the fiscal marksmanship (the deviation between what is budgeted and the actual spending) of gender budgeting showed a mixed scenario across sectors.