{"id":13755,"date":"2017-03-03T09:52:24","date_gmt":"2017-03-03T14:52:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/multiplier-effect.org\/?p=13755"},"modified":"2017-03-03T09:58:04","modified_gmt":"2017-03-03T14:58:04","slug":"indias-unexplored-bill-of-rights-a-tool-for-gender-sensitive-public-policy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bard.edu\/multiplier-effect\/indias-unexplored-bill-of-rights-a-tool-for-gender-sensitive-public-policy\/","title":{"rendered":"India\u2019s Unexplored \u201cBill of Rights\u201d: A Tool for Gender-Sensitive Public Policy"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Justice Verma Committee submitted its report on January 23,<\/span>\u00a02013. In addition to recommendations for reforming laws related to sexual violence, harassment, and trafficking, it provided a comprehensive framework for gender justice through a proposed \u201cBill of Rights.\u201d The Verma Committee\u2019s recommendations are still waiting to be transformed into public policy.<\/p>\n

We must not forget that this document represents an intense 30 days of work in response to a brutal gang rape of a young student in the heart of the nation\u2019s capital in a public transport vehicle in the late evening of December 16, 2012. She was returning home with her friend after watching \u201cLife of Pi.\u201d<\/p>\n

The power of this report is the acknowledgment (in the very first line of the report) that this brutal event represents a \u201cfailure of governance to provide a safe and dignified environment for the women of India, who are constantly exposed to sexual violence.\u201d The acknowledgement is a clarion call for government policies to ensure dignity, safe mobility, and security for women.<\/p>\n

\u201cBill of Rights\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

The Bill of Rights is a proposed charter that would set out the rights guaranteed to women under the Constitution of India, against the backdrop of India\u2019s commitment to international conventions. These rights are articulated as the right to life, security, and bodily integrity; democratic and civil rights; the right to equality and non-discrimination; the right to secured spaces; the right to special protections (for the elderly and disabled); and the right to special protection for women in distress.<\/p>\n

The beauty of this Bill of Rights is that, unlike public policy approaches in which women facing differing challenges and circumstances are all treated the same, a careful analysis of heterogeneity<\/em> is captured in these five dimensions (in this context, it is noteworthy that the Committee\u2019s work is informed by Amartya Sen\u2019s \u201ccapabilities approach\u201d). Conceptually, the Bill of Rights lays out an analytical framework for gender budgeting to be conducted in the realm of \u201cinternal security.\u201d When translating the Bill of Rights into policy, we need to examine existing budgets through a \u201cgender lens\u201d and rectify the deprivations thereby revealed.<\/p>\n

Gender Issues in Public Policy<\/strong><\/p>\n

After every Union Budget, questions arise as to \u201cwhat\u2019s in it for women?\u201d, but these debates have been largely been confined to just the rise and fall in allocations. The \u201crule of law\u201d is a public good. The purpose of this post is to highlight this significant policy document\u2014lying largely unexplored and with its recommendations mostly untouched\u2014on women\u2019s rights in India. Though the Verma Committee report was constituted to recommend \u201camendments to the Criminal Law so as to provide for quicker trial and enhanced punishment for criminals accused of committing sexual assault against women,\u201d it is written in a broader context than just analyzing the legal codes.<\/p>\n

The mere existence of the best-designed democratic institutions does not guarantee success: as noted by the Verma Committee report, even perfect laws would remain ineffective without the \u201cindividual virtuosity\u201d of the human agency necessary for implementing the laws. Similarly, although gender budgeting\u2014a silent revolution that integrates gender consciousness into fiscal policy frameworks\u2014has been applied in the case of a few public expenditure budgets, it has remained sporadic and ineffective, in part due to insufficient capacity-building among the bureaucracy and a lack of accountability mechanisms.<\/p>\n

Will the Fifteenth Finance Commission Integrate Gender?<\/strong><\/p>\n

In a co-operative federalism, it is high time that the Finance Commission \u201cown\u201d and integrate the gender concerns articulated in the Verma Committee\u2019s proposed \u201cBill of Rights\u201d\u2014either in formula-based unconditional grants with a gender indicator\/index as one of the criteria (just as a \u201cclimate change\u201d variable appeared in the formula of the Fourteenth Finance Commission in sharing the divisible tax pool with the States), or as specific-purpose grants to the States to engage in meaningful gender-budgeting fiscal policy practices at the subnational level. This idea has been analyzed in my papers published by the IMF (2016<\/a>) and the Levy Economics Institute (2016<\/a>; 2014<\/a>; 2010<\/a>).<\/p>\n

The Bill of Rights framed in the Justice Verma Committee Report can form the foundation for gender budgeting in a \u201claw and order\u201d context. Gender budgeting in criminal justice is a public good and needs effective planning and financing strategies, but it has so far been limited to the creation of the \u201cNirbhaya Fund\u201d (designed to fund new schemes for the safety and security for women, with an initial allocation of Rs. 1,000 crores), which has been unused since 2013.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Justice Verma Committee submitted its report on January 23,\u00a02013. In addition to recommendations for reforming laws related to sexual violence, harassment, and trafficking, it provided a comprehensive framework for gender justice through a proposed \u201cBill of Rights.\u201d The Verma Committee\u2019s recommendations are still waiting to be transformed into public policy. We must not forget […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":188,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[49,6],"tags":[824,932,60,1123],"class_list":["post-13755","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fiscal-policy","category-gender-and-equality","tag-gender","tag-gender-budgeting","tag-india","tag-justice-verma"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bard.edu\/multiplier-effect\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13755","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bard.edu\/multiplier-effect\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bard.edu\/multiplier-effect\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bard.edu\/multiplier-effect\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/188"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bard.edu\/multiplier-effect\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13755"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bard.edu\/multiplier-effect\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13755\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13759,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bard.edu\/multiplier-effect\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13755\/revisions\/13759"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bard.edu\/multiplier-effect\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13755"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bard.edu\/multiplier-effect\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13755"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bard.edu\/multiplier-effect\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13755"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}