Disappointing Budget’, Employment Crisis Faced by Women, Youth Ignored: AIDWA

New Delhi:  The All-India Democratic Women’s Association (AIDWA) expressed its disappointment at the Budget proposals that it said claimed to focus on the welfare of farmers, youth and women, but a closer look showed these claims as “false and misleading”.

“The lack of focus on the welfare of ordinary people and women is reflected in the continuing decline in public spending and drastic reductions in social sector expenditure, especially when the estimates are adjusted for core inflation rates of 5-6 percent. The central government expenditure as a percentage of total GDP has declined from 14.55 percent in 2024-25 to 14.18 percent in the estimates of 2025-26. The revised estimate on centrally sponsored schemes for 2024-25, published in this budget shows a decline of 18 percent as compared to the budget estimate,” it said in a statement, adding that “this shows that the government has not been spending even the meagre allocations that it had made in the last year,” said a statement by AIDWA.

The women’s organisation also noted that the estimates for gender budget constituted 8.8% of the total budgetary expenditure and about 1.61% of the GDP, but “Part A of the Gender Budget, i.e. 100 percent women-oriented schemes are only about 2 percent of the estimated budgetary expenditure.”

Also, the allocation for the Ministry of Women and Child Development is only 0.53% of the total budgetary expenditure. “A major component of the Part A schemes is the PM Awas Yojana which constitutes 74 percent of the estimate in 2025-26 as compared to 59 percent in 2024-25. This means that several other schemes for welfare have been under funded or discontinued,” it added.

In addition, AIDWA decried the fact the actual expenditures for prevention of violence against women and protection and rehabilitation of victims under Mission Sambal and Samarthya had declined substantially, by almost 50%.

Commenting on the Narendra Modi-led government’s furth, er cutbacks on food subsidy, and continuing the neglect of hunger and malnutrition, AIDWA noted that allocation was  Rs 8,394 crore less as compared to the actual expenditure in 2023-24.

“The PMGKAY allocations have declined by 2250 Cr as compared to last year’s budgetary estimates. The effective decline is much steeper if we take the food inflation of 7-8 percent into account. Though the government has claimed that it is addressing the problem of nutrition by launching a new phase of Saksham Anganwadi and POSHAN 2.0., the actual allocation is only 3 percent higher than the budget last year, which represents an effective decline,” read the statement.

On the employment crisis faced by the women and youth, AIDWA said these issues had not been addressed in this budget.

“Like its previous budgets, the government is still under the misconception that more reforms to get private investments and increase in credit limits will generate employment,” it added.

It also noted that the rural job guarantee scheme, MGNREGS, allocations had remained the same at Rs 86,000 crore and were 3.7% lower than the actual expenditure in 2023-24. T

“The finance minister has stated that employment will be generated through support for micro, small and medium enterprises and has tweaked the rules to increase their credit limits, especially with respect to enterprises run by women. However, it has not addressed the root causes that have led to the shutting down of 48 percent of MSMEs over the last few years,” it said.

AIDWA also pointed out that the government had completely ignored measures for social protection of women workers like domestic workers, ASHA, anganwadi workers, and others in the informal sector.

“The measures announced in agriculture state that credit limit for women SHGs would be increased. It is well known that about 60 percent credit to women SHGs is provided by private banks, MFIs and non-banking financial companies who give credit on high rates of interest. This will push the women further into debt traps”, it added.

The AIDWA said it would hold protests to “expose the pro-corporate and pro-rich intent of the policies of this government, and will intensify its struggle for increase in public expenditure for food security, employment, social security schemes, education and health.”

It accused the government of announcing some measures, such as on income tax, supposedly for the welfare of middle classes keeping the upcoming Assembly elections in mind, noting that there is “no relief for the ordinary working class households as rates of indirect taxes on items of daily consumption have not seen any reduction.”