Why gender budgeting is necessary in India

Gender budgeting is the formulation of policies and plans, allocation of resources, impact assessment and corrective follow-up action aimed at addressing gender disparities

Giving development policies a gender content would have a greater impact in some of India’s most backward districts. Consider Mewat district, situated 60 kilometres from high-tech Gurugram, Haryana’s most backward district, where a saline water zone coupled with lack of water supply forces women to travel for up to two to three hours daily to fetch drinking water.

Being a Muslim-dominated region, the cultural ethos is conservative, restricting the movement of women outside their homes. The average family size in the district is eight. Interestingly, Mewat is at the top in terms of the proportion of the child population (22.78 per