Assessing Gender and Child Budget Statements of Indian States
提出一个六指标框架，评估印度中央和邦政府的性别与儿童预算报告质量，发现多数邦在可及性和一致性上表现良好，但在覆盖范围、预算准确性和透明度等四方面有待改进。
The most commonly used tools for gender and child budgeting are the Gender Budget Statement (GBS) and Child Budget Statement (CBS), respectively. These statements have the potential to become effective instruments of public oversight, accountability, and engagement. However, methodological complexities to pragmatically arrive at spending on women and children, hinder the usability of the documents for policy formulation. This article provides a novel six-indicator framework to assess the quality of a GBS and CBS. The study uses the framework to assess the GBS and CBS of the Union and state governments in India. Findings show that most states perform well on indicators of accessibility and consistency but have considerable room for improvement on the remaining four indicators of coverage, budget accuracy and transparency, performance tracking, and legislative deliberation and audit of the statements.HIGHLIGHTS India’s Gender Budget Statement (GBS) and Child Budget Statement (CBS) face credibility issues limiting policy impact.A novel assessment framework identifies ways to enhance impact.Reporting disaggregated beneficiary and output data can improve accuracy.Following standard budgetary practices is nonnegotiable.