UP: Higher gender budget a breather but missing old data a big challenge
The fund flow is to be increased since the centre has increased the gender budget from R1.25lakh cr to R1.37lakh cr.
The Union budget presented by the first full time woman finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman has an enhanced allocation for the fairer sex, but the obsolete and missing data still pose a challenge before the government in accurate plan formulation.
No state is achiever (top category) in Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) - 5 that is gender equality, but Uttar Pradesh is third last in the tally prepared by the NITI aayog earlier this year. The state is formulating a comprehensive plan to achieve this goal but missing figures are a roadblock. Uttar Pradesh scored 27 of maximum 100 in gender equality- SDG 5.
However, the fund flow is to be increased since the centre has increased the gender budget from R1.25lakh cr to R1.37lakh cr. “Since the centre has increased the budget, the state is going to get more funds for the scheme,” said a planning department official. The centre enhanced the budget for Anganwadi services, national nutrition mission, child protection services and doubled the budget for PM Matru Vandana Yojana.
Economic export Arvind Mohan said the focus of the government was shifting to gender budgeting. “Both capital as well as revenue expenditure is increasing. This will help to increase women’s participation in workforce and economy,” said Mohan, who is professor and head of the economics department in Lucknow University.
Department of women and child welfare is the nodal agency for SDG 5. But the department also faces unavailability of certain type of data for formulating a concrete plan to achieve the goal. Coordination among departments is being flagged as an issue as data pertaining to different SDGs have several stakeholder departments.
“It is noticed that gender-based data is not available for various government schemes to assess the number of women beneficiaries,” said a government official, suggesting, “The data collection has become a cumbersome exercise when we are working on different patterns like SDGs. We have to change the format of data collection so that it is timely available.”
Arvind Mohan said most of the data was at cutting edge. “Most of ground level data is with district and divisional authorities. As far as Uttar Pradesh is concerned, data gap is bigger and in the absence of accurate data, accurate planning is not possible,” he said.
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