"Nirbhaya Fund", a non-lapsable corpus fund, which is to be utilized for the projects specifically designed to improve the safety and security of women is administered by:

Correct — C, The Ministry of Finance. The Nirbhaya Fund was announced in the 2013-14 Union Budget after the December 2012 Delhi gang rape, with a corpus of Rs 1,000 crore, and was made non-lapsable so that money not spent in a year would not be surrendered back. The corpus is administered by the Department of Economic Affairs in the Ministry of Finance, which is what the stem's verb asks for. The confusion the item is built on is real and worth holding onto rather than resenting. Women and Child Development is the nodal ministry for the fund: it appraises and recommends proposals, and an empowered committee of officers chaired by its Secretary clears schemes. Other ministries then run projects paid for out of the fund in their own domains — Home Affairs the Safe City projects and emergency response support system, Road Transport the vehicle tracking and panic-button work, Women and Child Development the One Stop Centres and the Women Helpline. Custody of the money and appraisal of the schemes sit in two different buildings, and this question asks about the first.

• (a)The Ministry of Women & Child Development — The commonest answer given, and half right in substance. WCD is the nodal ministry that appraises and recommends what the fund pays for, and it runs several funded schemes, but it does not hold or administer the corpus.
• (b)The Ministry of Home Affairs — MHA is the largest single user of the fund through the Safe City projects in eight cities and the Emergency Response Support System, and its subject is policing and women's safety. Using money is not administering the fund.
• (d)The Ministry of Education — It has no role of any kind here. The option is present to fill the fourth slot.

A non-lapsable fund is one whose unspent balance carries forward instead of lapsing at the close of the financial year, so that a long-gestation programme is not forced to spend badly in March. The Nirbhaya Fund was created on that model in 2013 for projects improving the safety and security of women. Its money is administered by the Department of Economic Affairs under the Ministry of Finance; the Ministry of Women and Child Development appraises proposals and recommends them; and the projects themselves are implemented by whichever ministry owns the subject.

Read the verb. Indian schemes routinely split three roles that a candidate tends to collapse into one: who holds the money, who clears the proposals, and who runs the project. Here the three are Finance, Women and Child Development, and a range of line ministries. An item that says 'administered by' is asking for the first; one that says 'nodal ministry' is asking for the second; one that names a particular scheme such as One Stop Centres or Safe City is asking for the third. The same split explains why newspapers can accurately call this a Women and Child Development fund and the Budget documents can accurately place it with Finance.

• The Nirbhaya Fund was announced in the 2013-14 Union Budget with a corpus of Rs 1,000 crore, following the December 2012 Delhi gang rape.
• It is a non-lapsable corpus fund administered by the Department of Economic Affairs, Ministry of Finance.
• The Ministry of Women and Child Development is the nodal ministry that appraises and recommends proposals for funding.
• Projects funded from it include the Safe City projects and the Emergency Response Support System (Home Affairs), One Stop Centres and the Women Helpline (Women and Child Development), and vehicle tracking with panic buttons (Road Transport and Highways).
• Being non-lapsable means an unspent balance carries forward to the next financial year instead of being surrendered.

• Answering Women and Child Development because the subject is women's safety; that ministry appraises proposals but does not administer the corpus.
• Answering Home Affairs because the biggest funded projects are policing projects.
• Reading non-lapsable as meaning the money cannot be spent, when it means the balance does not lapse at year end.

As a fund-to-ministry item like this one, or as statements testing what non-lapsable means and which schemes draw on the fund.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  A non-lapsable fund in the Union Budget is best described by which one of the following?

  • (a)A fund whose unspent balance carries forward to the next financial year
  • (b)A fund that cannot be audited by the Comptroller and Auditor General
  • (c)A fund created outside the Consolidated Fund of India by a private trust
  • (d)A fund that can only be spent with the prior approval of Parliament each quarter

  Answer(a) A fund whose unspent balance carries forward to the next financial year — that is precisely what non-lapsable means, and it is why the Nirbhaya Fund was set up on this model.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The One Stop Centre scheme for women affected by violence is implemented by which ministry?

  • (a)Ministry of Home Affairs
  • (b)Ministry of Women and Child Development
  • (c)Ministry of Health and Family Welfare
  • (d)Ministry of Law and Justice

  Answer(b) Ministry of Women and Child Development — One Stop Centres are run by WCD and are among the schemes funded from the Nirbhaya Fund.