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A Model Budget for our country
The country’s First Women’s Parliament was organized by National Alliance of Women in a spectacular manner at NCUI Auditorium New Delhi, between 2nd Feb- 5th Feb. The 4 days event was an eye-opener and a finger -post to the existing parliamentary system as 500+ women leaders from the actual constituencies of India participated in the model parliament and debated on the national issues, policies and displayed their competency in policy making.
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The Highlight of the Historic Women’s Parliament was the Budget speech by the Finance Minister of the Women’s Parliament, Dr.Neelavalli from IWID, Tamil nadu. Her novel Budget focuses on Gross National Happiness (GNH) index (GNH-A new parameter to measure the happiness of the citizens of a country) in addition to GDP parameters.
The salient features of the Budget are as follows:
- The Women’s budget for India by Dr. Neelavalli focuses on sustainable development with a tremendous increase for welfare programmes.
- The budget planning was done on the actual estimated figures with a total revenue of Rs 6,19,842 crore, including revenue receipts of Rs 6,14,497 and capital receipts of Rs 5345 crores.
- The First women’s Parliament Budget is a surplus budget with an estimated expenditureof Rs.5,88,689.56 crore with a surplus of Rs.31,152.44 crore to meet unforeseen expenditure.
- Allocation for Health is 7.5 percent of the total expenditure and for the first time in the history of free India, allocation for Education reaches 13.8% from just 2 percent. There is a cut on defense allocation by 60 percent.
- Agriculture; Small Scale and cottage industries; Urban and Rural Housing; Resource building for women; Social sector; Power Generation from Renewable energy sources; Development of North Eastern States and States on Red alerts in the Development index are some of the areas of intensive focus and care.
- Other salient features are special cells to meet housing needs in cities and night shelters for the deserted; people centric schemes and development programmes not permitting profit-motive agencies to manipulate the connecting sector –which will connect the hearts and minds of people towards peace, social justice and harmony.(Connecting sector includes Transport, Highways, Telecom and IT) .
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