A Budget Biased Against Women,

The Poor And Rural India: AIDWA

THE All India Democratic Women’s Association (AIDWA) challenges the finance minister’s assertion that housewives will welcome his maiden budget exercise. His budget mocks at the needs and demands of housewives and working women in India.

RURAL HOUSEWIVES

His definition of housewife clearly excludes the millions of rural housewives whose family budgets will be badly hit by the anti-rural bias in the budget reflected in the hike in prices of diesel oil and fertilizers. Further, the meagre increase of the Antodaya scheme to only 50 lakh families, hardly one fifth of those below the official calculated poverty line, when 6 crore tonnes of foodgrains are rotting in government godowns means the continued burden on housewives in poor landless households to feed their families at the cost of their own health.  Housewives who at great personal cost save from meagre family budgets for future security, instead of being rewarded by the finance minister have been punished with his cut of one per cent on their small savings. His budget promotes privatisation and user charges for services that should be provided at subsidised rates to the poor.

SOCIAL SCHEMES

Equally shocking budgetary allocations for many important schemes have been cut such as rural family welfare services that have been cut by Rs 254.50 crores, reproductive and child health care from Rs 571.53 crores to Rs 448.57 crores and the total family welfare allocation by over Rs 142 crores. Even as malaria and TB spread, the finance minister has cut allocations to these two schemes by Rs 10 crores instead of increasing their reach. The only increase is in population control and aids control programmes.  In this context of a callous approach to public health, the health insurance scheme suggested means that a poor family will have to pay as much as Rs 730 a year of which the government will pay a meagre amount.

WORKING WOMEN

For working women it is bad news as their demand for more working women’s hostels has been given short shrift by the government with a cut of Rs 3.5 crores bringing down the allocation to just Rs 9 crores. While the labour social security has been slashed by as much as Rs 30 crores, the specific scheme for women labour has been cut by Rs 8 cores and maternity benefit allocations have also been reduced by as much as Rs 22 cores. In an industry like beedi where the majority are women, the welfare fund has been cut by Rs 2 crores. The handloom sector which faces the greatest crisis and employs lakhs of women has been ignored in the textile package announced. The finance minister has praised the self-help groups but has not increased allocation to the Rashtriya Mahila Kosh even by one rupee.

The generosity of the finance minister in reducing the cost of foreign alcohol will hardly endear him to women.

NO TRANSPARENCY

The finance minister has  refused to be transparent in the allocations or expenditure in women specific schemes or in women’s component allocations in general allocations. The AIDWA calls upon women to protest against this anti-poor, anti-rural inflationary budget.