When we look at the current budget declaration and Pranab’s presentation at first glance people will think Congress Government is going to uplift women all together in its current term. If we dig deeper into the budgetary allocations we can see only 210.63 crores for Women’s Welfare alone and 14.70 crores out of National Nutrition Mission.

Based on the 2001 census there are 495,738,169 women in India. If we consider all of them there will be just about Rs.5/- per head. Ok I know we are not considering the urban population and this is mainly targeted to the rural women. India consists of less urban population and majority are in rural areas but even if we take half of them the per head allocation is only about Rs.10!!! Isn’t this yet another gimmick played by Congress led government targeting women vote bank?

Government also offers education programs for women and Mr. Mukherjee vows to reduce by half, the current level of female illiteracy, in three years. To me this seems to be the biggest joke of the year!!! Honorable minister also used the occasion really well to address some vote banks by proclaiming “This mission will focus on minorities, Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes and other marginalized groups.”

Apparently, the growth rate of literacy is roughly averaging to 12% per decade. From the table it is clear that the rate of literate women in rural area is indeed pathetic. How is Mr. Pranab Mukherjee going to fix this in three years with a budget of less than Rs.10?

It is clear that empowerment of women is not the concern of the Government or Sonia led Congress party. The intention is the same when they come up with more ridiculous laws in the name of women empowerment. As a matter of fact, the number of women queuing up for alimony/maintenance is way too higher in the so called educated urban areas than in rural areas. The illiterate women rural areas make their own living doing manual labor but educated women generally don’t want to make their own living or they consider it as an abuse. May be Sonia Gandhi and her team knows this well and that may be the reason for this good for nothing budgetary allocation for women welfare and more focus on legal reforms so as to give more extortion tools for women.