Gender: The Nirbhaya Fund, set up eight years ago to combat violence against women, remains largely underspent and slotted for services that don’t directly help women, said Oxfam in its recently released report.
In the report titled ‘Towards violence free lives for women’, the international charity analysed the country’s budgetary allocation over the last three years towards boosting women’s safety.
The Nirbhaya Fund was launched in 2013 with an initial contribution by the government of INR 1,000 crore. By 2019-20, the Finance Ministry had provided for an amount of INR 4357.62 crore to the fund. However, as of 2020-21 only INR 30 was allocated per woman or girl to fight gender-based violence, with more than 73 percent of the Nirbhaya Fund allocated to the Home Ministry which oversees police.
“The money has largely paid for programmes—improving emergency response services, upgrading forensic labs, or expanding units that fight cybercrime—that don’t exclusively benefit women,” Amita Pitre of Oxfam India told the BBC.
While the Home Ministry has spent most of the money given to it from the fund, other government departments have largely sat on the cash. The Ministry of Women and Child Development—which is the nodal authority for the fund—used only 20 percent of the money it had received up to 2019. It was used to set up crisis centres for rape or domestic violence survivors, shelters for women, female police volunteers, and a women’s helpline.
States on their part haven’t utilised their share of the funds either. Only five states—Delhi, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Maharashtra, and Uttar Pradesh—used up 57 percent of total allocations.
By Oxfam’s calculations, the Nirbhaya Fund is underfunded—it needs USD 1.3 billion to allow even 60 percent of women dealing with any form of violence to be able to access services.
Read this article to learn more about the status of gender-responsive budgeting in India.