MPSC 2023 Prelims Paper-I · Question 60 of 100

Correct — option (4), 'Independent provisions for women in the general budget'. Gender budgeting is not a budget of its own; it is a way of reading and constructing the ordinary budget so that the provisions made for women within it can be identified, measured and held to account. The reasoning behind it is that a budget which looks neutral on its face need not be neutral in its effects: an allocation for hostels, transport, sanitation, skills training or health reaches men and women in different proportions depending on how it is designed, and unless someone asks the question the difference is never seen. Gender budgeting asks it systematically. In India this takes the form of a dedicated Gender Budget Statement presented with the Union Budget documents since 2005-06, in which ministries report their allocations under two heads: a first part covering schemes in which the entire provision is meant for women and girls, and a second part covering schemes in which women are intended to receive a substantial share of a wider allocation. Nothing in this arrangement removes money from the general budget into a separate one. The provisions sit inside the ordinary demands for grants of the ordinary ministries, and the statement is a lens laid over them, which is exactly what option (4) describes with the words 'independent provisions … in the general budget'. The institutional machinery follows the same logic: the Ministry of Women and Child Development acts as the nodal ministry, and gender budgeting cells within the various ministries and departments are meant to review schemes at the design stage rather than merely to count spending afterwards. This is why gender budgeting is described as an instrument of gender mainstreaming — it works by changing how the whole budget is made, not by carving a corner out of it.

• (1)Separate budget for men — Nothing in the practice of gender budgeting produces a separate budget for men, and the option is wrong in both of its elements at once — in supposing that a separate budget is created and in identifying men as the group whose provisions are being tracked. Gender budgeting arose because the outlays of a general budget were reaching women less well than they reached men, so the exercise is directed at making the provisions for women visible and adequate. The option is in the set to complete a symmetrical pattern of four choices — separate budget for men, separate budget for women, provisions for men, provisions for women — which is a common way of constructing an option set for a definition question, and which means that a candidate has to get both variables right rather than one.
• (2)Separate budget for women — This is the trap the question is built around, and it is chosen by candidates who have the right subject and the wrong mechanism. Gender budgeting does not mean that the government prepares a second budget document exclusively for women, with its own revenue and its own expenditure. The allocations concerned remain inside the ordinary budgets of the ordinary ministries, and what is prepared separately is a statement that identifies and totals them, so that the provision made for women can be seen and questioned. The distinction matters in practice as well as in definition: because gender budgeting works within the general budget, it can reach into every ministry's spending, whereas a separate women's budget would confine attention to whatever had been carved out and would leave the far larger remainder unexamined.
• (3)Independent provisions for men in the general budget — This option gets the mechanism right and the beneficiary wrong, which makes it the mirror image of the previous one. It correctly describes gender budgeting as the identification of independent provisions inside the general budget rather than as the creation of a separate document, and a candidate who reaches it has understood the harder half of the definition. What remains is to notice which group the exercise concerns. Gender budgeting in India, and in the international practice from which it derives, is directed at the position of women and girls, because it was the invisibility of their share in public spending that the technique was devised to correct. A careful reader will also see that this option and option (4) differ in a single word, which is a signal that the difference between them is the whole point of the question.

Gender budgeting belongs to a family of techniques that examine a budget by whom it reaches rather than by what it buys, and it rests on the distinction between a budget that is gender-neutral in form and one that is gender-neutral in effect. The exercise typically runs in several stages: an analysis of the situation of women and men in a sector, an assessment of whether existing policies address the gaps found, an examination of whether the money allocated matches those policies, a check on whether the money was actually spent as intended, and finally a review of whether outcomes for women improved. India's practice has developed the first three stages most fully through the Gender Budget Statement, which classifies reported allocations into those meant wholly for women and girls and those in which women are expected to receive a substantial share of a broader programme. The Ministry of Women and Child Development is the nodal ministry, and gender budgeting cells were established in ministries and departments to carry the analysis into scheme design. Several state governments have adopted the same instrument for their own budgets. The essential point to hold is that the technique is diagnostic and procedural: it changes how a budget is examined and framed, and it does not create a parallel budget or a separate pool of money.

MPSC asks about gender budgeting because it sits at the meeting point of the economy syllabus, public administration and the social justice component, and because it is a term whose plain-language reading is misleading. The words themselves suggest a budget for a gender, which is precisely what the practice is not, and the Commission exploits that gap by printing 'separate budget for women' alongside the correct answer. That is the essential examination lesson here: when a technical term has an obvious lay meaning, the question is usually testing the technical one, and the option that restates the lay meaning is usually the distractor. The construction of this option set repays study as well. Two variables are being crossed — separate budget against provisions within the general budget, and men against women — so the four choices exhaust the combinations and a candidate who is right about one variable and wrong about the other still scores nothing. Reading such a set as a grid rather than as a list makes it clear at once which variable each option is testing, and reduces the work to two independent decisions instead of four comparisons.

• Gender budgeting is the examination and framing of the general budget so that the provisions made within it for women and girls can be identified and assessed; it does not create a separate budget for women.
• India has presented a Gender Budget Statement with the Union Budget documents since 2005-06, reporting allocations under a part covering schemes meant entirely for women and girls and a part covering schemes in which women are intended to receive a substantial share.
• The Ministry of Women and Child Development is the nodal ministry for gender budgeting, and gender budgeting cells in ministries and departments are intended to carry gender analysis into the design of schemes.
• The rationale of the exercise is that a budget which appears neutral may not be neutral in effect, since the same allocation can reach men and women in different proportions depending on how a scheme is designed.
• Gender budgeting is described as an instrument of gender mainstreaming because it works by changing how the entire budget is analysed and framed rather than by setting aside a separate pool of money.

• Reading the term literally as a separate budget for women, which is the plain-language meaning and precisely what gender budgeting is not
• Getting the mechanism right and the beneficiary wrong, or the reverse, in an option set that crosses two variables
• Confusing women-specific schemes, where the whole allocation is for women, with pro-women schemes, where women receive a share of a wider allocation
• Assuming gender budgeting is confined to the ministry dealing with women's affairs, when its purpose is to reach the allocations of every ministry

Gender budgeting reaches MPSC papers as a definition question like this one, as a factual question on when the Gender Budget Statement was introduced or which ministry is the nodal ministry, and occasionally as a statement-judgement item mixing true descriptions with the literal misreading. It is also asked as part of wider questions on budgeting techniques, where it appears alongside outcome budgeting and zero-based budgeting, and as part of the social justice syllabus alongside schemes for women. Because the term is short and its definition is contested only by its own plain meaning, the whole topic can be secured with one sentence on what it is, one on what it is not, and three facts — the statement, its two parts, and the nodal ministry.

No directly related past PYQ was found.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The Gender Budget Statement presented with the Union Budget of India classifies reported allocations principally into which of the following categories ?

  • (a)Central schemes and centrally sponsored schemes
  • (b)Schemes with the entire allocation for women and girls, and schemes in which women receive a substantial share of a wider allocation
  • (c)Plan expenditure and non-plan expenditure
  • (d)Revenue expenditure and capital expenditure

  Answer(b) Schemes with the entire allocation for women and girls, and schemes in which women receive a substantial share of a wider allocation — the first part captures women-specific programmes and the second captures pro-women components within broader ones, which is what allows the statement to reach across the spending of every ministry rather than only that of the ministry dealing with women's affairs. Plan and non-plan, and revenue and capital, are classifications of expenditure by a quite different principle.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Which of the following best describes why gender budgeting is regarded as an instrument of gender mainstreaming ?

  • (a)Because it creates a separate budget document for women
  • (b)Because it transfers funds from other ministries to the ministry dealing with women's affairs
  • (c)Because it changes the way the entire budget is analysed and framed rather than setting aside a separate pool of money
  • (d)Because it applies only to schemes meant exclusively for women

  Answer(c) Because it changes the way the entire budget is analysed and framed rather than setting aside a separate pool of money — the allocations concerned remain within the ordinary budgets of ordinary ministries, and gender budgeting works by making the share reaching women visible in all of them. That reach is exactly what a separate women's budget would lose, since it would confine attention to what had been carved out and leave the far larger remainder unexamined.