FINANCE Minister while presenting her record 8th budget in a row clearly tried to appease the country’s urban middleclass which was getting very restless in recent times. However, the women and marginalised sections of the society are facing harsher difficulties due to the stagnant rural real wages for men and women as per the Labour Bureau data and declined real monthly income for wage/salary employed men and women as indicated by the Economic Survey 2025. The women and marginalsed sections are not only economically backward but they also face gender and social discriminations.
The Indian Constitution provides right to equality to all and also directs the state to take measures for development and empowerment of women and socially and educationally backward classes. The government budget, however, do not seem to have given adequate focus on the women and marginalized societies, though there have been some positive announcements.
The finance minister in her speech emphasized that the vision of Viksit Bharat encompasses, among other things, 70% of women in economic activities. Currently women work participation ratio (WPR), however, is just 40.3% compared to 73% men WPR. The government announced in budget 2025-26 to launch a “comprehensive multi-sectoral ‘Rural Prosperity and Resilience’ programme” in partnership with states, which will focus on 5 lakhs rural women, young farmers, rural youth, marginal and small farmers, and landless families. It is not clear, however, that what would be the budget for the programme and it will be anchored by which ministry.
Other announcements for women include launch of a new scheme for First-time Entrepreneurs in line with the current Standup India scheme, which will benefit 5 lakhs women, Scheduled Tribe and Scheduled Caste first-time entrepreneurs and enhancing the unit cost norms for the anganbadi services under Saksham Anganwadi and POSHSN 2.0 scheme. Budget for this umbrella scheme, however, has increased only marginally from Rs. 21,200 crores in 2024-25 BE to Rs. 21,960 crores in 2025-26 BE.
Allocations for the Ministries for Marginalized groups
Overall budget allocations to the Ministries catering to the marginalised sections of the society is also not very promising. As the table below shows there is a no major increase in the budget allocated to these ministries except for the Ministry of Tribal Affairs, which has been given a 14% increase from the current year’s budget. Both departments of Social Justice and Empowerment and Empowerment of People with Disabilities have seen less than 5% increase over the current years budget allocation, while the budget for Ministry of Women and Child Development has increased by a meager 3% over the current year’s allocation.
Table1: Budget for Ministries/Departments for the marginlaised sections (Rs. Crores)
Source: Union Budget, various years
Even more troublesome trend, however, is lower utilization of the allocated budget to these ministries over the years. Year after year the actual expenditure by these ministries is lower than the budget estimates. During the current year (2024-25) also the budget for all the above ministries/departments have been revised at lower than the budget estimates. The actual expenditure of Ministry of Minority Affairs has particularly been very low during the years 2022-23 and 2023-24 at 16% and 5% of the allocated budget respectively. In the current year also the Ministry’s budget has been revised to Rs. 1,868 crores (2024-25 RE) from Rs. 3,138 crores (2024-25 BE). With closure of many schemes of the ministry and such lower level of budget utilization, its difficult to understand what the policy direction the government is taking for the minority communities.
Gender Budget and Budget for Welfare of SCs and STs
The union government also brings out Gender Budget Statement (statement 13) Statements on Allocations for Welfare of SCs and STs (statements 10A and 10B). These statements show the allocations for schemes benefiting women and for SCs and STs across the ministries.
The allocation for welfare of STs and SCs increased only marginally by 3.48% and 1.80% respectively.
Table2: Budget for Welfare of SCs and STs (Rs. Crores)
Source: Union Budget, various years
* Total budget for the all the centrally sponsored schemes and central sector schemes
The budget of Scheduled Tribe Welfare has stagnated at 4.85% in terms of proportion to total expenditure on the all the schemes of the Central Government, while allocations for Scheduled Caste Welfare declined from 8.18% in current year (2024-25) to 7.79% in the year 2025-26. The allocations to the welfare of SCs and STs as percentage of total schemes’ budget should be same as their proportion in population as per the norms.
Allocation towards Gender Budget
The allocations towards the gender budget as reported in the gender budget statement (GBS) has increased as percentage to total union budget as shown in the table below. The increase, however, is in the Part B of the statement, which lists the schemes/programmes having 30 to 99% allocations towards women and girls and also due to inclusion of Pradhan Mantri Garib kalyan Anna Yojana which was not reported in GBS earlier.
Table 3: Allocations to Gender Budget (Rs. Crores)
Source: Union Budget, various years
The allocation towards the Part A of the gender budget has declined from Rs. 112,396.15 crores in the current year to Rs. 105,535.4 crores in 2025-26. The decline is mainly due to the decline in the PM Awas Yojana (Urban) budget and budget for ‘LPG connection to Poor Households’ which are reported in Part A of the GBS on the other hand there is no increase in the budget for PM Awas Yojana (Rural) or the budget for Indira Gandhi National Widow Pension Scheme, compared to the current year. The budget for National Rural Livelihood Mission-Aajeevika, however, has seen an increase of Rs. 4,000 crores.
The allocations under the Part B of the GBS has increased quite substantially. As mentioned above, this increase is result of the reporting of Rs. 1.07 lakh crores as GB component of the Pradhan Mantri Garib kalyan Anna Yojana, reporting of which in GBS has started this year itself. This is about 52% of the total budget of the Pradhan Mantri Garib kalyan Anna Yojana. This has increased the size of not only the Part of GBS but the overall size of the gender budget itself, taking the gender budget to the 8.86% of the total union budget.
Besides, there is also an increase in GB component of the MGNREGA budget which increased from Rs. 28,888.67 to Rs. 40,000 in the year 2025-26. Interestingly, total budget of the MGNREGA has not increased this year and it remains Rs. 86,000 crores in the year 2025-26 exactly same as the current year (2024-25) budget. Yet the GB component of this scheme has been reported higher from the current year. To make it clearer, in current year the government reported 33.65% of MGNREGA as gender budget while for the year 2025-26 46.51% has been reported as gender budget of MGNREGA. As per the MGNREGA website, the women person days created under MGNREGA is generally more than 50% and its currently about 57%. This might have prompted the government to increase the GB component of the MGNREGA budget.
The budget for other major schemes under the Part B of GBS, however, has not increased very substantially and it has in fact declined for the schemes like Jal Jival Mission (JJM) substantially. The overall budget for the JJM has also declined.
Only one major scheme is being reported under Part C of the GBS i.e. PM Kisan Samman Nidhi Scheme. The allocation under this scheme has increased marginally and so has its GB component as reported in the Part C of the GBS.
Though the finance minister emphasized that this budget is focusing on investing in people, yet there is nominal increase in education budget, decline in the food security budget (food subsidy), JJM, PM Awas Yojana (Rura and Urban) no change in the crucially important schemes like MGNREGA, PM Gram Sadak Yojana, Jal Jivan Mission, National Social Assistance (pension) Scheme etc.
Overall, the budget does not inspire much hopes for women and the marginalized communities. It is imperative to be have inclusive policies and allocate for the empowerment of women and the marginlaised communities not only for achieving the Sustainable Development Goals and the objective of achieving the Viksit Bharat.