The money set aside yearly for the Union ministry of women and child development (WCD) has remained stagnant at around 1% of the entire government of India budget, which is a cause of “serious concern and introspection”, a parliamentary panel has said.

The WCD ministry, responsible for creating an enabling environment for both women and children to access fundamental services, should be given a greater share, the parliamentary standing panel on human resource development said. The panel is headed by Bharatiya Janata Party Rajya Sabha member Satyanarayan Jatiya.

“... there is an urgent need to increase the percentage share of budget of the Ministry of Women and Child Development in the GOI budget to meet the needs of population of women and children so that schemes and programmes being run for them do not suffer any shortfall in resources,” the committee’s demand for grants report for 2020-21 said.

In 2016-17, the WCD ministry’s allocation was Rs 17,408 crore and made up 0.88% of the total budget, which rose to 1.03% of the total budget in 2017-18, when the allocation was Rs 22,095 crore. In 2018-19, the WCD’s allocation of Rs 24,700 crore was 1.01% of the total budget.

In 2019-20 the allocation of Rs 29,165 crore accounted for 1.05% of the total budget. The ministry’s current budget of Rs 30,007 crore is equivalent to 0.985% of the total budget.

In a presentation to the committee on February, WCD secretary Rabindra Panwar said that while there had been a gradual increase in the budgetary provisions of the ministry since 2017-18, the ministry’s current allocation of Rs 30,007.10 crore had been made against a projected demand of Rs 33,720 crore.

In its report, the panel also noted gross under-utilisation of funds across some of the key schemes of the ministry.

Among such schemes was the Poshan Abhiyan Scheme, the multi-ministerial nutrition mission, which was allocated Rs 3,400 crore in the revised estimates in 2019-20. The ministry had utilised only Rs 11,09.09 crore or 32.62% of the funds as of January 31, 2020.

The Beti Bachao Beti Padhao scheme, which saw an allocation of Rs 200 crore last year, spent only Rs 57.90 crore as of January 31, 2020. This accounted for only 28.95% of the allocation.

The panel has, in conclusion, suggested that the gap between the projected demand of the ministry for each of its programmes and the actual allocations needs to be bridged, and also asked the ministry to exercise financial prudence and use the allocated funds optimally and judiciously.