Kolkata: Nirmala Sitharaman, the first full time finance minister of India on Friday set aside a sum of Rs 29,000 crore-plus for the Women and Child Development ministry for 2019-20, a significant 17 per cent rise, with the social services sector getting a major boost in the Budget tabled by her. The total funds allocated for the social services sector by the FM, which includes nutrition, social security and welfare, was raised from Rs 2,551 crore in 2018-19 to Rs 4,178 crore in the 2019-20 fiscal.

That’s not all. Ms Sitharaman said that in order to encourage women enterprise, the Budget has a proposal to expand the Women Self Help groups interest subvention programme to all districts. “Every verified woman SHG member having a Jan Dhan Bank Account will be allowed an overdraft of Rs 5,000. One woman in every SHG will also be eligible for a loan of up to Rs 1 lakh under the MUDRA scheme,” she said.

Little wonder therefore, that her moves have gone down very well not only among her women cabinet colleagues and various social organizations working towards the goal of women and child development.

WCD minister Smriti Irani took to Twitter to praise the Budget, saying it will give further impetus to the mission of women-led development.

“I thank PM @narendramodiji & FM @nsitharaman ji for proposing first ever broad-based committee to assess budgetary allocation from gender perspective and suggest way forward. It will give further impetus to our mission of women-led development,” said Ms Irani.

The somewhat voice of concerns came from CRY and Kailash Satyarthi Children’s Foundation, which said it was a matter of concern that despite the 16 per cent increase in the allocation of funds for children in the current budget, the percentage of funds allocated for them works out to only 3.29, which is lower than the allocation for children in terms of percentage during 2016-17 and 2017-18 which was 3.32 per cent. The foundation urged the Centre to restore the budgetary cut imposed in the allocation for the ‘national scheme for incentive to girl child for secondary education.

Child rights body CRY said the considerations of children, their rights and aspirations continue to “languish in priority”.