A key informant interview conducted for this research in May 2015 with an official from the Ministry of Women and Child Development101 reveals that a gender review of the National IT Policy is probably underway, but the extent to which such a process can succeed in incorporating women’s empowerment and gender equality efforts as a key priority area for e-government is questionable, for two reasons:
- The Ministry of Women and Child Development lacks a clear policy vision of leveraging the potential of ICTs in furthering its existing efforts. While it is true that recently the Ministry has taken up a Mission Mode Project for the digitalization of its various services, there is no strategic vision about how to leverage the digital opportunity for women’s empowerment and gender equality. This Project being taken up by the Ministry is more a result of the Department of Electronics and Information Technology’s push for overall digitalization of government departments and agencies, and ensuring that the Ministries not covered in the previous round of MMPs can be checked off on their list, this time around. Whilst it is true that the representatives of the Ministry have recently made public statements in global forums on the potential of ICTs in furthering the gender equality agenda,102 there is no push to incorporate the e-government agenda systematically into preexisting policy frameworks on women’s empowerment such as the National Policy for the Empowerment of Women (2001).
- The more worrying issue is the inadequate budgeting to tackle gender-based exclusion, and the intensification of this trend in recent years.103 An analysis of the 2015-16 budget of the Government of India reveals that the specific allocation to the Ministry of Women and Child Development has decreased by over 50%104 when compared to the revised budget of 2014-15; and further, there has been a cut of over 20 per cent, Rs. 20,000 crore (200,000 million), in the gender budget.105
Against this macro context, addressing the women’s empowerment agenda in e-government policy and programming seems to be an uphill task.
- Name with-held on request.
- http://articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com/2015-03-12/news/60047988_1_gender-equality-gender-budgeting-gender-perspective
- See the work of development economists Jean Dreze and Amartya Sen.
- Though two women-centred initiatives were announced in the 2015-16 budget with much fanfare – the 1000 crore allocation to the preexisting Nirbhaya Fund and 100 crore for the newly launched Beti Bachao, Beti Padhao (Save girl child, Educate girl child) fund, on the whole, the total allocation to the area of women and child development has been slashed by over one-third when compared to the previous year.
- Patel, V. (2015), Union Budget 2014-15: What is in store for women?, http://www.academia.edu/14066145/Union_Budget_2014-15_What_is_in_store_for_women_by_Prof._Vibhuti_Patel, Retrieved 21 November 2015.