A Historic Time for Gender Planning in India

Gender Experts to Analyze India’s Flagship Public Programmes New Delhi, 7 September: In a historic two-day meeting, the Planning Commission of India invited leading gender experts to conduct an analysis of the Approach Paper to the Twelfth Plan and India’s flagship national schemes. The experts will now examine whether the plans and paper meet the needs of women across the country. “The Planning Commission is committed to listen to women’s voices and recognizes the importance of engendering plans and policies. The important next step in this direction would now be to give specific inputs on how to make schemes and policies more gender responsive,” said Dr. Montek Singh Ahluwalia, Deputy Chairperson, Planning Commission of India. The Planning Commission is also likely constitute a committee, consisting of these experts, to look into various reports and possibly, the Chapters of the Twelfth Plan, from a gender perspective. Senior policy makers, leading feminist economists, representatives of women’s organizations, and officials from different ministries were present at the two-day consultation organized by UN Women and the Planning Commission in New Delhi, on 6th and 7th September, 2011. The consultation was held to share knowledge and experiences on gender and planning, and came up with best practices at the national, state and district levels. Outlining the importance of the meeting, Ms. Sushma Kapoor, Regional Programme Director, a.i. UN Women said: “The most crucial outcome is that inroads have been created for feminist economists and other women’s organizations to influence the formulation and implementation of the Twelfth Plan. It is a strategic time to conduct such an exercise as preliminary work for the Twelfth Five Year Plan is currently underway.” High-ranking officials of the Planning Commission such as Montek Singh Ahluwalia and Dr. Syeda Hameed, Member Planning Commission (Women and Children) provided crucial inputs during the discussions. Perhaps for the first time, six others members joined the discussion on gender including Shri. Arun Maira, Prof. Abhijit Sen, Shri. B K Chaturvedi, Dr. Mihir Shah and Dr. K. Kasturirangan. Dr. Syeda Hameed from the Planning Commission hoped that the methodologies arrived at in this consultation will feed into the 12th Plan, and provide valuable inputs for state and district planning.