17 July 2023

MAINS DAILY QUESTIONS & MODEL ANSWERS

Q1. What is gender budgeting? Describe the obstacles related to it?

Paper & Topic: GS II – Budget-related issues

• Gender budgeting, a crucial tool in public governance, assesses the impact of spending decisions on gender equality. Gender budgeting advocates budgetary initiatives that will effectively eliminate gender gaps and helps highlight how gender disadvantages may have unwittingly crept into public policies and the distribution of resources. In an effort to include gender-responsive budgeting (GRB) into India’s budgeting process, the government developed the Gender Budget Statement (GBS) in the Union Budget of 2005–2006.

Gender budgeting in India still faces a number of challenges, notwithstanding the gender budget’s implementation:

• A assessment of India’s budgeting exercises demonstrates that GBS has limitations that produce less-than-ideal results, demonstrating the lack of outcome-oriented budgeting. Studies on the structure and practises of gender budgeting in India have revealed that when outcome-oriented budgeting is absent, it frequently becomes more of an accounting exercise, with the main goal of achieving gender parity taking a back seat.
• Lack of funding: Since the program’s inception, the Union budget allocation for gender budgets in India has been constant, ranging from roughly 3 to 6 percent. The Budget Estimate of the Gender Budget only receives 5% of the total Union Budget for FY 2023–2024.
• The gender budget in India is divided into two parts: Part A deals with schemes that provide women with 100% of the cash (like maternity benefits). Plans under Part B allocate at least 30% of their money to women, such as the Mid-Day Meal initiative. Part B has grown to predominate the gender budget since it was first introduced.
• Problems with monitoring and implementation: Despite the requirement to release the gender budget statement, there are no processes for accountability that call for an impact assessment of the allocations for female recipients. Approximately 16 states in India presently take part in GRB, although because to inadequate training for public servants, the calibre of statements generated and allocations carried out by each state vary significantly.
• Methodology errors: There are some flaws in the Gender Budget Statement’s (GBS) methodology. There is a lack of an open procedure that details the weights assigned to various strategies to improve gender equality. As a result, a programme like MGNREGS, which obviously targets and benefits women, is included in Part B while the gender-neutral programmes are placed in Part A. This has resulted to an odd allocation.
• Concentration of financing in some areas: In recent years, between 85 and 90% of the Gender Budget’s expenditures have gone to just four ministries: Rural Development, Education, Health, and MWCD. This funding allocation pattern implies that rather than being distributed more equitably across the budget, resources are concentrated in a limited number of sectors.

In order to examine India’s gender-responsive budgeting (GRB) approach, the following steps should be taken:

• Women’s programming needs to get significantly more financing since it is crucial to advance women’s safety, education, health, and participation in the workforce.
• Because priority sectors, where gender disparity is most severe, should receive more financing, improved targeting is necessary. These industries should be chosen after careful consideration to ensure that targeted investment creates a positive cycle and has a multiplier effect on women’s living standards.
• Similar to how states are assessed for the ease of doing business, rank states according to the success of their gender budgets, impact evaluations, and gender audits of these allocations. Gender Budget Cells at the state level should receive technical support and capacity building.
• Enhance accountability: In accordance with the 2012 recommendations made by the Planning Commission’s Working Group on Women’s Agency and Empowerment, it is advised that the Outcome Budget be gender mainstreamed. Gender audits of centrally financed programmes and flagship projects should be carried out to assess the results.
• Despite some of its shortcomings, the gender budget statement (GBS), an institutionalised instrument that has allowed policymakers to measure how much the government spends on women’s empowerment, shows India’s earnest efforts to accomplish its gender equality targets. Thanks to a tool like GBS, civil society organisations and supporters of women’s rights may argue for increased funding for women. In order to take into account shifting conditions and trends, we also need to periodically examine our plan and make budgeting method adjustments.

Q2. The National Research Foundation Bill, 2023 has been introduced by the government in an effort to strengthen the country’s research eco-system. In light of this, talk about the significance of the National Research Foundation’s (NRF) founding. What other challenges does India’s scientific research and development ecosystem face?

Paper & Topic: GS II – Government Policies and Interventions

• According to a government announcement, the National Research Foundation (NRF) would be founded to encourage collaboration between governmental bodies, corporations, and academic and research organisations. The NRF will create a legislative and policy framework that could encourage collaboration and more industry R&D spending. The NRF is planned to significantly transform the nation’s research environment with an estimated budget of 50,000 crores from 2023 to 2028.

Following were the objectives behind the founding of the National Research Foundation (NRF):

• The NRF’s primary objective is to fill the vacuum in the research environment that has kept India’s scientific capabilities from reaching their full potential. This divide exists between higher education and research. The organisation wants to increase the capacity for research inside Indian universities in order to better combine the disciplines of teaching and research.
• Industry involvement in research: At colleges, universities, research institutes, and R&D labs, the NRF will be crucial in launching, fostering, and promoting research, innovation, and development.
• The NRF, which is modelled after the highly successful US National Science Foundation, aims to unify funding for scientific activities, departing from the prior compartmentalised strategy. Inconsistent funding and infrastructure have resulted from the distribution of research funding across multiple government departments and institutes up till now. The NRF will have a budget of roughly Rs 50,000 crore, of which about 70% would come from government funding and the remaining 30% from private sector research investments.
• Multidisciplinary approach to research promotion: In addition to supporting research in the scientific sciences and engineering, the NRF will also promote research in the social sciences, the arts, and the humanities. The foundation’s all-encompassing strategy exemplifies its broad scope and commitment to addressing India’s pressing societal issues.
• By shifting the emphasis from elite institutions to projects in peri-urban, rural, and semi-urban areas, the NRF is also expected to foster the democratisation of research funding. In addition to the scientific and line ministries, it will create an interface mechanism to allow state governments and enterprises to participate in and contribute to scientific R&D.

The Indian ecosystem for research and development faces the following challenges:

• Lack of funding: India’s investment on research and innovation (R&I) as a percentage of GDP has regularly decreased from 0.84% in 2008 to around 0.69% in 2018. This is in contrast to the US, China, Israel, and South Africa.
• Bias in favour of reputable organisations and researchers: The IITs and other universities receive the majority of research money. Research at other higher education institutions shouldn’t be sacrificed in order to advance research at elite colleges. The top schools and universities (like the IITs) must exert distinct efforts to provide guidance and carry out collaborative research on this.
• In terms of the number of submitted patent applications, India lags behind other nations. According to the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO), China submitted 1.538 million patent applications, the US 605,571 patent applications, and India only 45,057 patent applications, of which more than 70% were submitted by non-resident Indians.
• Fewer publications: According to the US National Science Foundation’s 2018 compilation of science and engineering indicators, at least four times as many articles were published in China and the US in 2016 as were published in India.
• The difficulties facing the private sector’s involvement in R&D: It is crucial for fostering progress and innovation to find an answer to the conundrum of why the Indian business sector is hesitant to invest in R&D. The biggest impediment to company innovation is the potential for regional competitors to copy ideas, which also discourages investment in R&D. Another reason why private enterprises invest more in R&D than the government does in the US and China is the calibre of talent that these countries’ higher education institutions attract.
• Due to administrative and governmental red tape, getting laboratory equipment can be a hassle for researchers. As in a game of red tape roulette, researchers must first try their luck with Indian manufacturers under the current system. As a result, there is a delay in the availability of crucial research equipment.
• The establishment of the National Research Foundation is a crucial investment in a knowledge-based global economy. The NRF’s inclusive, democratic, and multidisciplinary strategy, which promises revolutionary impacts in the next years, ensures a broad-based development of the country’s research capabilities. However, effective governance procedures must also be put in place for NRF to realise its full potential.