The Political Economy of Gender Budgeting: Empirical Evidence from India

Gender budgeting is a public policy innovation to transform the gender commitments into budgetary commitments. The political economy process of gender budgeting in India has encompassed four distinct phases - innovative knowledge networking, building institutional structures, reinforcing state capacity and strengthening the accountability mechanisms. Against these policy processes, we have estimated the sector-wise quantum of gender budgeting in India emphasising the statistical invisibility of care economy. The State-wise equally distributed equavalent (Xede) estimates of gender development showed that 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 of gender budgeting showed a mixed scenario across sectors.