NEW DELHI: Significant progress has been made towards gender equality with the establishment of ‘Nari Shakti Vandan Adhiniyam’ to reserve one-third of seats in Parliament and state assemblies for women in 2023 and declaring commitment to women-led development during India’s G20 presidency.
Meanwhile, India ranks 127th out of 146 countries in the World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap Report 2023. Despite an upward trend in recent years, India’s female labour force participation rate remains among the lowest in the world. Women’s job insecurity, women’s dominance in the informal economy, poor working conditions and lack of social insurance, gender pay gap, and disproportionate burden of unpaid and unaccounted work remain persistent challenges.
We highlight key factors to focus on with regards to gender equality and women empowerment goals in the upcoming general elections ahead of the Interim Union Budget 2024-25 to be presented on February 1. Allocation for these schemes and initiatives will be crucial towards achieving these goals.
Main Promises
The G20 declaration emphasized women-led development and listed commitments including socio-economic empowerment, gender inclusion in digital technology and climate change action, and health, food security, nutrition and well-being to advance the UN’s Sustainable Development Goal 5 “Gender equality and the empowerment of all women and girls.”
Prime Minister Narendra Modi, in his Independence Day speech last year, said his government would create 20 million “Lakhpati Didis” in partnership with women self-help groups (SHGs). This is in line with India’s proposal to highlight women-led development at the G20 forum. The scheme aims to provide employment-oriented skill development training to women. As part of this initiative, the Union Cabinet has approved Rs 1,261 crore from 2024-25 to 2025-26 to provide drones to 15,000 SHGs across the state. Women from the SHGs will be trained to operate drones and will be able to provide rental services for agriculture.
Economic Empowerment
India’s female labour force participation rate is set to rise to 37 percent by 2022-23 from 23.3 percent in 2017-18, according to data from the annual Periodic Labour Force Survey (PLFS). The increase was driven primarily by rural women. During the same period, the female unemployment rate fell from 5.6 percent to 2.9 percent.
Research and data have shown that COVID-19 has disproportionately affected women in terms of job losses (see, for example, here, here and here). IndiaSpend’s second “Women at Work” series also looked at the specific challenges women faced during the pandemic. In this context, as IndiaSpend reported in July 2022, the increase in the number of women in the workforce and the fall in unemployment rates indicate that women have taken up lower-paid, lower-quality jobs, mainly out of hardship. Himanshu, an associate professor at Jawaharlal Nehru University, told us that these trends are consistent with previous economic crises. For example, he noted that during the agrarian crisis from 1999 to 2004-05, the workforce increased by 60 million. “Households have a mindset of what they consider to be a minimum income to survive,” he said. “When this income falls, it pushes potential earners, including women and the elderly, into the workforce.”
The data also shows that rural women have started working under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS). According to government data, women’s participation in MGNREGS has increased every year over the 10 years up to 2023-24, except in 2017-18 and 2020-21. Even in these years, women worked more days than men under MGNREGS.
MGNREGS mandates that at least 100 days of employment be provided to each rural household every year. However, according to government data, this has never been achieved since the scheme was launched. The highest average number of days of work provided per household so far was 54 days in 2009-10, The Hindu Business Line reported in March 2023. Moreover, of the 56 million households that had some employment in 2023-24, less than 2.2 million have completed 100 days of employment, the lowest figure in the past decade.
According to an IndiaSpend analysis of government data, demand for employment through MGNREGS is above pre-pandemic levels, but funds available for wages remain low. As a result, funds dried up by September 2023, after which the finance ministry allocated an additional budget of Rs 1 trillion for MGNREGS. As of November 29, 2023, the federal government had unpaid wage liabilities of Rs 2,020.6 crore and physical liabilities of Rs 4,939.6 crore, the government reported to the Lok Sabha in December 2023.
Allocations have not kept pace with the increase: Allocations to the scheme have fallen by almost half since the year the pandemic began, according to an analysis of federal budget data by the Centre for Budget and Governance Accountability (CBGA), a think tank that focuses on public policy and government finances in India.
This has resulted in delayed wage payments and reduced work allocations, adversely affecting rural women workers who depend on the scheme for their livelihoods.The issue of delayed payments continues for a variety of reasons, including delays in disbursing funds by the federal government, allegations of corruption, and glitches in the attendance monitoring application and the Aadhaar-based payment system.
In a country where 73.2% of rural women workers are employed in agriculture, women own only 12.8% of the land, IndiaSpend reported in September 2019. As such, allocations to agriculture and allied sectors affect women’s lives and livelihoods.
“The recent allocation pattern in the agriculture budget has primarily favoured individual farmer-centric initiatives and has ignored the importance of community-based schemes such as Paramparagat Krishi Vikas Yojana (PKVY), designed to promote organic farming through the formation of clusters and bio-resource centres,” points out Ankita Akodiya, policy analyst at CBGA. PKVY has the potential to support women collective farming if a larger economic stimulus is provided, as 30% of its allocation is earmarked for women farmers. The scheme has been merged into the Rashtriya Krishi Vikas Yojana (RKVY) in 2022-23. Moreover, despite incorporating several schemes, RKVY, as an umbrella scheme, has seen its allocation reduced in 2023-24.
Anganwadi and ASHA workers remain overworked and underpaid
Anganwadi workers, helpers and Accredited Social Health Activists (ASHA) form the frontline of healthcare in India, but as IndiaSpend previously reported, they are overworked and underpaid. According to government data, by July 2023, there were 1.3 million anganwadi workers and 1.2 million anganwadi helpers in India. Anganwadi workers earn between Rs 3,500 and Rs 4,500, while helpers earn Rs 2,250 as honorarium. Apart from a small performance-linked incentive of up to Rs 500, their salary includes an additional honorarium paid by the state. In late 2023, there were strikes by anganwadi workers in Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Odisha, Bihar and Maharashtra demanding pay raises, improved working conditions, recognition as civil servants and various forms of social insurance.
Anganwadi services are provided under the aegis of the central government-sponsored schemes Saksham Anganwadi and POSHAN 2.0. The schemes are funded in a 60:40 ratio by the Union Government and states. According to government data, as of December 2023, Tamil Nadu and Goa had the highest provisions for additional remuneration based on qualifications and experience, while Arunachal Pradesh and Nagaland did not offer any additional remuneration.
Anganwadi helpers in Delhi earn about 6,810 rupees a month, but this amount needs to be revised to take into account the average cost of living in the city, a field survey by Action India, a grassroots women empowerment organisation, has found.
Given that allocations to these schemes have been stagnant for the past three years, the feminist policy group’s key recommendation for the budget is to increase the remuneration and allocations paid to ASHA and Anganwadi workers.
Nirbhaya Fund is yet to be fully utilised
India has various laws, policies and programmes to address gender-based violence. Public funds are allocated annually for their implementation, but as we reported last year, most of the funded measures are implemented only after violence has occurred. Our analysis shows that even these measures are inadequately funded.
The Nirbhaya Fund is a non-expiring fund for women’s safety that was established in 2013. Data submitted to the Rajya Sabha by the Ministry of Women and Child Development in December 2023 showed that only 70% of the fund (Rs 5,119 crore out of Rs 7,212 crore) has been utilised since the inception of the scheme by 2023-24. The ministry said the low utilisation could be due to not receiving utilisation certificates from states.
The Nirbhaya Fund has been marred by a biased allocation pattern towards surveillance projects and severe underutilisation of funds, IndiaSpend previously reported. For instance, of the total fund assessed so far (Rs 12,008.4 crore), almost a quarter has been assessed for a single project – the “safe cities” proposals for eight cities.
According to the dashboard, 12 of the 42 projects with budgets assessed had no funds spent, including a “Plan for emergency care and access to justice support for rape/gang rape victims and pregnant underage girls,” which, according to the plan dashboard, had not yet had its budget approved by the “competent financial authority” as of April 2023.
This dual problem of under-utilisation and under-funding is affecting the implementation of projects undertaken by the Nirbhaya Fund. A case in point is the One Stop Centre, where under-salary and delayed payments plague staff. Providing quality services to victims of violence remains a formidable challenge. “Using Nirbhaya Fund for staff salaries is not recommended but should be pursued to increase utilisation and improve overall implementation of interventions,” argued a gender-sensitive budgeting expert.
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