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LATEST NEWS UPDATES | Budget 2016: Nirbhaya Fund is a dud; Jaitley should urgently find ways to utilise it -Kanika Kaul

Budget 2016: Nirbhaya Fund is a dud; Jaitley should urgently find ways to utilise it -Kanika Kaul

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published Published on Feb 23, 2016   modified Modified on Feb 23, 2016
-FirstPost.com

The high incidence of violence against women and the ensuing public outcry has brought the issue to the forefront of the policy discourse in the last few years, underscoring the need for the government to undertake substantive interventions to address gender based violence. It was against this backdrop that the former Finance Minister, in his Budget Speech in 2013-14 announced the introduction of Nirbhaya Fund, acknowledging that “...As more women enter public spaces – for education or work or access to services or leisure – there are more reports of violence against them”. The fund is meant to support initiatives towards protecting the dignity and ensuring safety of women.

It is well recognised that implementation of legislations and programmes pertaining to women in general, and for addressing violence against women specifically, have been constrained owing to inadequate resources. The effective utilisation of the fund, one of the key provisions in the Union Budget for the safety of women, could have led to improvements in women’s safety in the country in the last couple of years; however the Nirbhaya Fund doesn’t seem to have had any impact on the ground yet.

Though the total magnitude of funds in the corpus itself is not large, the introduction of the fund reinforced the need for coordinated efforts by the government authorities across a range of sectors to ensure safety of women and address gender based violence. In response to a call to central ministries to submit proposals under the Nirbhaya Fund, several ministries such as Road Transport and Highways, and Information and Technology came forward with proposals for measures to enhance women’s safety. However, the lack of a clear mechanism for the operationalisation of the fund has meant that resources allocated under the fund have remained unutilised, even as more resources have been added each year since its inception.

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The author works with Centre for Budget and Governance Accountability (CBGA), New Delhi. She can be contacted at kanika@cbgaindia.org. The views expressed are personal.

FirstPost.com, 22 February, 2016, http://www.firstpost.com/business/budget-2016-nirbhaya-fund-is-a-dud-jaitley-should-urgently-find-ways-utilise-it-2636728.html


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