CURRENT AFFAIRS

Detailed explanation-1: -India’s Gender Budget, which aims to reduce the gender gap, was allocated ₹2.23 lakh crore in the 2023 Union Budget–just 2.12 per cent higher than the Revised Estimates (RE) of ₹2.18 lakh crore for 2022-23. However, it was at least 30 per cent higher compared to last year’s Budget Estimates (BE) of 1.71 lakh crore.

Detailed explanation-2: -The Finance Minister accepted the Expert Group’s recommendations on gender responsive budgeting in 2004, and it was announced in the Union Budget Speech that India would be undertaking gender budgeting for the 2005/06 Union Budget.

Detailed explanation-3: -Gender budgeting was given additional impetus by the Fourth World Conference on Women, held in Beijing in 1995, whose “Beijing Platform for Action” called for ensuring the consideration of a gender perspective and women’s needs in budgetary policies and programs.

Detailed explanation-4: -The major policy initiatives undertaken by the Ministry in the recent past include universalisation of ICDS and Kishori Shakti Yojana, launching a nutrition programme for adolescent girls, establishment of the Commission for protection of Child Rights and enactment of Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act.