The Economics of Climate Change

Prof. M. K. Ghadoliya
Director, (Academic)
V.M.Open University,Kota

“Climate Change” is use to describe a change in the climate, measured in terms of its statistical properties, e.g., the global mean surface temperature (Wikipedia). In this context climate is taken to mean the average weather. Global Warming refers to change in the Earth’s temperature. Data reveal that between 1900 to 2005 temperature increased by 1.40 F or 0.780 C.
Climate change is a serious and immediate threat to development; Unmitigated climate change could cause warming of up to 50 C this century. The difference between today’s climate and the last ice age leading to a world much different from the one we live in. Even a 20 C warming, likely the best we can achieve will result in new weather patterns including increased variability and more frequent and intense extreme weather events. Dealing with this requires substantial adaptation efforts: There are two major approaches to deal with the problem: (i) Balancing Approach, and (ii) Imperative Approach. The balancing approach compares benefits and costs of reducing emissions and tries to reach at equilibrium. Reduce emissions up to the point where the marginal benefits of additional reduction equals the marginal cost of additional reduction. The imperative approach believes that there is a sharp threshold value where by marginal damage increases sharply once concentration passes a certain level. This approach lays emphasis on reduction of emissions so that concentration stays below this level. However, even at these levels some 100-400 million more people could be at risk of hunger and 1-2 billion more may suffer from water shortages. The E.U. is tending towards the imperative approach while the American economists are mostly favouring the balanced approach. This gives the entirely different view of discounting and different values for cost benefit analysis of reducing Green House Gases (GHGs).
Developing countries are the most vulnerable to changing climate, potentially bearing some 80 percent of the damages from climate change.
If we take a higher Discount Rate, the present value of future impact is less. Taking a lower Discount Rate, the present value will be more. The choice of a Discount Rate to apply to Climate Policy is in part an ethical judgment not purely a matter of economics. With regard to economics there are many who argue that the best way to fight climate change is to ensure rapid growth. They argue that the answer to climate change should be searched only in technological advancement, as the richer countries are more resilient to shocks and have better technology to adapt to climate change. Emissions do not only depend on the growth rate of the economy other factors such as structural change in the production system, technological change, urbanization and trade patterns influence.
The economics of climate change in European countries in tending towards the imperative approach while among the most American economists it is tending towards balancing approach. This reflects not only a different view of discounting but also, a fundamentally different assessment of underlying costs and benefits of reducing Green House Gases (GHGs). These gases have been linked with climate change. One very important thing to remember is that GHGs are stock pollutant and not flow pollutant. Scientists tell us that putting off mitigation for 10 years would likely make it impossible to keep worming from exceeding 2o C. The carbon dioxide emitted today will stay in the atmosphere for a century, and temperatures continue rising for a few centuries after green gas concentration in the atmosphere have stabilized.
The loss of welfare is calculated on Net Present Value (NPV) Approach that is highly sensitive towards the rate of interest taken for discounting. The choice of a climate discount rate to apply to climate policy is in part an ethical judgment not purely a matter of economics. With regard to economics there are two empirical assumptions taken in the conventional economic analysis that seem incorrect. Altering them would lower the value of the interest rate r. These assumptions are as follows: (i) Climate change does not directly affect people’s well-being; it affects only the production of market goods. (ii) The second assumption is that people’s preferences do not change as they become richer, they do not change their expectations to match their wealth. The difference is not just discounting: it involves assessment of future damages and assessment of costs of emission reduction. The key message is clear. The cost of strong and urgent action to avoid serious impacts from climate change is substantially less than the damages thereby avoided. Even with strong action to reduce green house gas emissions adaptation must be a crucial part of development strategy. Policy requires urgent and international action as adopting later is not an option.
Although developing countries emitted only one-third of the GHGs now in atmosphere these countries are now producing more than half the world’s annual emissions, and this share is rapidly increasing. Developing countries cannot simply follow the carbon intensive development path that high-income countries did. High-carbon growth in developing countries will exacerbate the climate problem delaying action by a decade or two could increase mitigation costs by as much as 2 to 5 times according to some models. Developing countries are growing fast and need massive expansion in energy, transportation, urban systems and agriculture. Therefore, while high-income countries must reduce their carbon footprints, tackling climate change also requires a new development paradigm that fulfils the expectations of developing countries.
Cost Benefit Analysis
Standard cost benefit analysis can be applied to the problem of climate change. This requires valuation of cost and benefits using the willingness to pay as a measure of value and a criterion for accepting or rejecting proposals.
The valuation of costs and benefits of climate change is difficult because some climate change impacts are difficult to value e.g. ecosystems and human health. It is also impossible to know the preferences of future generations, which affects the valuation of costs and benefits. The standard criterion is compensation principle. So long, benefits are more it is a gain in welfare. If there are no mechanisms allowing competition to be paid, then it is necessary to assign weights to particular individuals. One of the mechanisms for competition is impossible for this problem. Mitigation might benefit future generations at the expense of current generations, but there is no way that future generations can compensate current generation for the cost of mitigation (De Canio, 2007: p.4) on the other hand should future generations bear most of the cost of climate change, compensation to them would not be possible. Another transfer for compensation exists between region & population.
In Cost benefit analysis, an acceptable risk means that the benefits of climate policy outweigh the costs of the policy. The standard rule used by public and private decision makers is that a risk will be acceptable if the expected NPV is positive. The expected value is the mean of the distribution of expected outcomes. This criterion has been justified on the basis that a policy’s benefits and costs have known possibilities and risk can be insured. Climate change is difficult to calculate. In addition, some impacts, such as those on human health and biodiversity are difficult to value. Similarly, there are difficulties in risk management through insurance.
Adaptation to global warming may be done as a matter of course without the intervention of any government and it is called autonomous adaptation. On the other hand planned adaptation can be reactive or anticipatory i.e., undertaken before impacts are apparent. Some studies suggest that human systems have considerable capacity to adopt autonomously others point to constraints on autonomous adaptation, such as limited information and access to resources. The autonomous adaptation to climate change has a larger cost and it could be avoided through planned adaptation.
Climate Change & Scenario
(i) Unsustainable Consumption Patterns of the rich industrialized nations are responsible for the threat of climate change. Only 25 per cent of the global population lives in these countries but they emit more than 70 per cent of the total global co2 emissions and consume 75 to 80 per cent of many of the other resources of the world. (Parikh et.al.1991)
(ii) In per capita terms, the disparities are also large: an Indian citizen emits less than 0.25 tonnes carbon per year whereas a citizen of the USA, for example, emits more the 5.5 tonnes which is 22 times higher than Indian citizen. In such a situation, how can we ensure equitable and efficient solution and reach at an agreement that is acceptable to all.
(iii) Another issue of great concern to all of us is the reliability of researches. According to initial researches, developing countries were change with large emissions of methane from paddy fields. However, the Indian agricultural scientists later proved that these charges were exaggerated. Agrawal and Narain (1991) argue that emissions by poor are basic human right and should not be held responsible for climate issues.
(iv) Climate change in India may lower agricultural production. Indians should be concerned about climate change since this phenomenon might have substantial adverse impact on them in terms of lowering agricultural production. A United Nations Organization report states that CHG concentrations should be stabilized at levels where food production is not threatened. Although it is really very difficult to determine the tolerance level but Kumar and Parikh (2001 a & 2001b) took up a detailed study to examine the impact of climate change an agricultural crop yield and welfare. They estimated that with a temperature change of + 20 C and an accompanying precipitation change of + 7 per cent, farm level total net-revenue would fall by 9 per cent. whereas with temperature increase of + 3.50 C and precipitation change of + 15 per cent the fall in farm level net revenue would be nearly 25 per cent. Kumar and Parikh estimated that without considering the carbon dioxide fertilization effects temperature rise between 2.50 C to 4.90 C for India yield losses for rice and wheat vary between 32 and 40 per cent and 41 and 52 per cent respectively. This may cause a GDP drop by 1.8 per cent to 3.4 per cent. These are very large changes and may cause much human misery. From India’s point of view a 20 C increase would be intolerable.
(v) Risk of Sea Level Rise Another important impact of climate change is sea level rise leading to submergence of coastal areas that will displace population from coastal zone. This will create large number of environmental refugees especially from low-lying delta regions in poor countries. In Asian Development Bank report 1995 Mr. V. Asthana estimated in his article entitled climate change in Asia estimated that one meter rise in sea level would displace 7 million persons in India.
(vi) Risk of Extreme events increased occurrence of extreme events due to climate change will also affect the poor most. Green House Gas Emission on per capita basis in India are about 70 per cent below the world average.
Per Capita Carbon-dioxide emission (metric tons) Indian Scenario
Country
Per Capita Carbon-dioxide emission (metric tons)
USA
20.01
EU
9.40
Japan
9.87
China
3.60
Russia
11.71
India
1.02
World Average
4.25

Five India specific studies on GHG emission reach the conclusion that in 2030-31 per capita GHG emission in India would be 2.77 tonnes and 5 tonnes of Co2 e (Carbon dioxide equivalent) India GHG emission in 2031 vary from 4.0 billion tonnes to 7.3 billion tonnes of Co2e.
Thus-even in 2031 India’s per capita GHGs emission would stay under 4 tonnes of Core which is lower than the world average of 4.25 tonnes of Co2e in 2005.
India share in Global Co2 emission is only 5 per cent equivalent to Japan whose population is negligible when compared with India, US alone contributes 22 per cent where as Russian Federation Contributes 8 per cent. Thus, India’s contribution is much negligible. It is true that a global climate treaty in a urgent need. A failure in copenhagen is not the end and we should continue our serious efforts in cancun in 2010. Most countries see aggressive measures to reduce carbon emissions as a threat to their national economic development. The main point of disagreement is not on the reduction of emissions but it is on the point whether reduction measures should be uniform on all economies or not. Developed economics favour uniform norms and argue that if the reduction agreement is not universal developed economics will be at comparative disadvantage. However, it is also true that developing countries could not be denied to exercise their basic human rights in the name of global warming and climate change.
Trend: Global Future Scenario
While a global climate treaty is clearly desirable, a cost effective and energy efficient technology is also needed. It is good news that investment in emission free renewable energy is taking off anyway. In 2009 62 per cent of the newly installed power capacity in EU was renewable, as was more than half the new capacity deployed in the US, while China installed a huge 37 gw (giga watts) of renewable capacity the most of any country. (EJ- “Taming Climate Change by Joseph M Hogen 29.11.10 p. 11)
Kyoto protocol of 1997 on climate change is expiring is 2012 so cancun summit (Maxico) is our last chance to save the planet. From Bali in Indonesia (2007) to poznan in Poland (2008) and to Copenhagen in Denmark (2009) developed and developing countries have been struggling to fix the desired levels of carbon emissions cut that each other should adopt to ensure that the global average temperature does not rise beyond 20 C preferably (1.50 C) by 2050 that is essential to save the world from calamity and this can be achieved if we shift our energy production from fossil fuels to clean energy i.e. solar or wind energy. Parikh and Gokarn (1993) put in the first effort to identify India’s emissions profile by using an input-output model. They aggregated the 1979-80 table into 40 sectors. These input- output coefficients are updated by the Planning Commission at least every 10 years. Subsequently, the 1989-90 table was used by Murthy et al. (1997a, 1997b) to study the structure of CO2 emissions where one looks at the coal, oil, gas and electricity rows that cut across different sectoral columns with the level of activities. Parikh and Gokarn (1993) studied emissions from different sectors power, steel and transport and so on. By different income groups, rural urban low, middle and high income. For different purposes: different fuels (coal, oil, gas).
The results are as follows:
The power sector accounts for 48% of emissions, followed by road transport (10%) iron and steel (10%) and so on. This gives an idea which sector will be affected if, say a carbon tax was levied on them or which sectors offer possibilities for large reduction in emissions, if modernised.
Direct and indirect emissions in the final demand show that the construction sector was the highest contributor though the energy used for construction at the site was very small. This is because the energy intensive materials such as steel, aluminium, bricks, and cement glass lime and so on are used in construction. Study of tables shows the proportions of intermediate and final uses of energy from different sources. Almost all coal is used for intermediate purposes, which means that the fuel burden of a carbon tax will not fall on the consumers if rationalisations of production processes or efficiency improvements are cost effective. On the other hand, 30% of oil and 20% of electricity are used for direct consumption in carbon using sectors. A carbon tax or price changes could matter to the consumers directly either in terms of costs or adjustments. The study of per capita energy use (director indirect) 1989-90 shows consumption of coal, oil and gas by different rural urban income groups and their corresponding carbon emissions . It can be seen that the bottom 50% of rural people emitted in 1990 a mere 54 kg og carbon per person per year. The richest 10% of urban population emitted 12 times as much as 656 kg of carbon per person per year. When compared with the world average of 1.1 tonnes the figure seems to be very small for India. Even the projected emissions for 2020 show that the bottom 50% of rural population would emit a mere 60 kgC per person per year and top 10% in urban areas 795 kgC(Murthy et al., 1997).
Mitigating Climate Change:
India has for quite some time pursued GHG friendly policies in her own interest. These includes:
Emphasis on energy conservation.
Promotion of renewable energy sources.
Abatement of air pollution.
Afforestation and wasteland development.
Economic reforms, subsidy removal and joint ventures in capital goods.
Fuel substitution policies.
Some of these efforts are on-going for several decades and are institutionalised in a number of ways through policies, programmes and creation of specific institutions. In addition to government efforts there are a number of measures taken by people themselves. Some of because of resource minimising cultural traditions as well as good practices that exist in India due to poverty and deprivation. These ranges from lack of electricity connections lack of piped water lack of cooking fuels, lack of heat in devices lack of basic infrastructure such as schools, hospitals and roads that are essential elements for human development and cannot recommended to continue.
India’s development needs and its commitment for poverty eradication will result in an increased energy use. This may be considered as basic human right of the poor even if it increases india’s GHG emissions. There is always trade off between economic growth and from climate change. No scientific consensus exists on who should bear the burden of adaption and mitigation costs. People who bear emission reduction costs or benefits are often different from those who pay or benefit from adaption measures. Mitigation costs are estimated on the basis of the baseline data and the way costs are modelled assumptions about future policies. In cost benefit analysis, tradeoffs between climate change impacts, adaptations and mitigation are made explicit. It has its limitations. In spite of the criticisms the cost benefit analysis has several strengths. It offers internally consistent and global comprehensive analysis of impacts. As uncertainty is reduced, the integrated models used in cost benefit analysis might become more realistic and useful.


References
Banuri, T. et al. 9 1996), “Equity and Social Considerations.” In J.P. Bruce et al. Climate Change 1995 www.ipcc.ch/ipccreports/sar/wg/ipcc/III.pdf
Chichilnisky, G. and G. Heal (1994), “Who should abate carbon emissions?: An international viewpoint” Economic letters 44. http://chichilnisky.com/pdf/ papers/93.pdf.
De Canio, S.J. (2007) “Reflections on Climate Change, Economic Development and Global Equity”. www.stephendecanio.com. “Economic Development, Poverty Reduction and Carbon Emissions in India”, Energy Economics, vol. 19, No.3
Murthy, N. S. , Manoj Panda and Jyoti Prakesh (1997a) “Economic Development, Poverty Reduction and Carbon Emissions in India” , Energy Economics, vol. 19, No.3
Murthy, N. S. , Manoj Panda and Jyoti Prakesh (1997b) “ Economic Growth, Energy demand and Carbon Dioxide Emissions in India: 1990-2020 Environment and development Economics, vol.2, No. 2
Parikh and Gokarn (1993) Climate Change and India’s Policy Options Global Environmental Change Vol. 33 3,(3) 276-291
Rogner, H. H. et al (2007) International Governmental Panel on Climate Change by B. Metz, O. R. Davidson, P.R Bosch, R. Dave, L. A. Meyer (Ed.) Cambridge.
Toth, F. L. et al. (2001) Decision making Frameworks. In Climate Change 2001 Opcit. Cambridge.

Criminal Wastage of Food grains

Criminal Wastage of Food grains in the name of the poor
The major objective of the Government run Public Distribution System (PDS) in India is mainly meant to provide food grains at affordable prices to the poor and at subsidized prices to the population living below the poverty line. Now the question is who is poor? The definition of poverty has always been the most controversial and widely debated issue at national as well as international platforms. Poverty cannot be viewed merely as a set of indicators, as one dimensional phenomenon. Rather a complex plays of regional, socio-economic and political factors. Mohan Guruswamy and Ronald Joseph Abrabham of the Centre for Policy Alternatives, New Delhi highlighting the difference between poverty and Hunger state: “Poverty is an economic condition. Hunger is a physical condition that arises out of severe economic condition. While the definition of Hunger in terms of calories can remain constant, the definition of poverty is relative to the present levels of general prosperity...The present official poverty line is based only on Calories and hence accounts for little else but the situation of one’s hunger .It would have been more accurate to define this as a starvation line, as that is exactly what it is.” The official poverty line should br renamed as ‘Starvation Line’ since apart from providing 650 grams of food grains per day , it makes very little provision for the other essentials of life. The most talked about PDS programme is not being utilised to provide a balance diet so as to prevent infant and child mortality. Government is not prepared to implement The Supreme Court’s order of August 12 ,2010. The Court made certain directions like limiting food procurement to covered warehousing capacity and distributing the rotting food grains free of cost to the poor. Do you know in India on the one side as per the Human Development Report (2005), 47 % children age 5 are underweight. Similarly, 21% of the population is undernourished in 2002-03 on the other on August 2010 the total food stocks with the FCI were 55 million tonnes as compared to the Buffer requirement of 27 million tonnes. Of this 15 million tonnes of wheat was lying in the open space. As per some estimates 50,000 tonnes of food stocks have already deteriorated beyond human consumption as result of long improper storage. This is what i call criminal wastage of food grains. This wastage is a cost to the public exchequer and is booked in the food subsidy bill in the name of the poor.
On the one side we know that India’s 80% of the population lives in rural areas and of this nearly 75% do not purchase food grains for their consumption from market as they produce for themselves and store for themselves. So the government PDS system is meant to cater to the needs of only left out poor population in rural and urban areas. It becomes clear from this that food and fertiliser subsidy of nearly Rs 70,000 crores is spent to subsidising the inefficiencies of the Food Corporation of India and to cater to the needs of political vested interest groups.
If the Government is really serious to do something for the poor then it should examine its PDS policy and should obey the directions of the apex Court. The work of distribution may be handed over to the Gram Sabhas. The work of procurement and distribution may be given to these rural bodies so that huge transportation cost of Rs 315 /- per quintal per month is also reduced within limits. Let the Village Panchayat and Gram Sabha decide who is poor and what should be done to eradicate his/her poverty.

How to Deal with the Problem of Gender Differentials?

How to Deal with the Problem of Gender Differentials?
Dr.M.K. Ghadoliya
Deptt. of Economics
V.M. Open University, Kota

ABSTRACT

United Nations Decade for education for sustainable development began in the year 2005. Since long economists have proved a positive relation between education and development. In September, 2000 at the UN Millennium Summit World leaders agreed to a set of eight time bound and measurable goals and targets to achieve by the year 2015. They are now called the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). A hot topic at all meetings these days is to discuss the progress made by various countries in achieving these goals. MDGs relates to combating poverty, hunger, disease, illiteracy, environmental degradation and discrimination against women. Among these MDGs the one which relates to Gender inequality is of vital importance and is a key to achieving many other objectives, such as universal primary education and a reduction in under-5 mortality. The performance of our country on this issue is not very much encouraging. Girls receive discrimination on almost on counts. These girls face discrimination as they come from lower income groups. One way to pinpoint the policies needed to reduce gender disparities are through gender budgeting, which involves the systematic examination of budget programmes and policies for their impact on women. Education is important in addressing the issue. We may establish a separate women’s University to address the issue of Gender Discrimination. The real challenge is to meet the ever increasing demand of education without compromising with quality. What should be done to ensure quality? Is opening separate Women’s Universities and opening the field for the international players a solution? How could we meet the demand for quality education? How could we promote gender equality? These are some of the questions that need to be discussed at length. Unless we ensure getting all girls into schools this is not going to happen. In India, 37 percent of girls aged 7-14 belonging to the socially deprived castes and tribes do not attend school. Practical actions to promote education for “excluded” girls are required to ensure gender equality.

Introduction
United Nations Decade for sustainable development began in the year 2005 has attempted to blend the concept of education for sustainable development with environmental education, which was given new momentum at the Bio-diversity Summit in Rio-de-Janeiro in 1992 with the campaign for "Education for all" that was reenergized at the Dakar World Forum in 2000. The fact has been proved again and again that there is a positive relation between education and development. Development according to Prof. Amartya Sen is the enhancement of freedom. The measure of development is the extent to which people enjoy greater freedom on more dimensions. Education is Central to development and freedom is also the means of development.
In September, 2000 at the U.N. Millennium Summit World leaders agreed to a set of time bound and measurable goals and targets of combating poverty, hunger disease illiteracy, environmental degradation and discrimination against women. They are now known as Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) with just 8 years remaining to meet the MDGs the Global community is focused on what's being done to halve poverty from 1990 levels by the target date of 2015 and to meet several other objectives, including improving health and education.
The Eight MDGs for 2015 are:
1. Halve extreme Poverty and Hunger
2. Achieve Universal Primary Education
3. Empower Women and promote Equality
4. Reduce Under 5 Mortality by Two-third
5. Reduce Maternal Mortality by Three-fourth
6. Reverse the spread of Disease especially HIV/AIDS and Malaria
7. Ensure Environmental Sustainability
8. Create a Global Partnership for Development with targets for Aid Trade and Debt relief.
Thus Gender Disparity MDG-3 is much lower on the scale at number three among Eight U.N. Goals. Greater focus on MDG-3 is critical -although valuable in its own right as an important development objective- it is also a key to achieving several other MDGs. The empirical evidence favours the view that greater gender equality helps in reduction in poverty and women empowerment.
Concept of Gender and Gender Disparity in India
What is Gender:
“Gender refers to the socially constructed and culturally variables roles that women and men play in their daily lives.” As a conceptual tool it has been used to highlight various structural relationship of inequality between men and women as manifested in labour markets and in political structures as well as in the household. Men and women are different. Society treats them as different and pays detail attention to maintaining and emphasising that difference through clothes, ornaments, gestures and roles. Men and women are similar but there is no general interest displayed in the similarity. Although men and women both are human beings and social beings, who share many things in common but the similarities are forgotten. Women’s specific and separate needs do not receive much attention. At best their needs and interests are subsumed under the general interest which is men’s interest. We are used to hearing words “men include women.” This assumption instead of including women ensures that men are ‘noun’ and women are perceived as also there. This perception affects the quality of women’s lives in profound ways and so there is need to examine and understand the difference and dimension between men and women and basis for this assumption.
The class distinction between men and women and basis for this assumption:
The class Distinction on which the term’s legitimacy depends, rests on the progressive demarcation of biological sex and socially constructed Gender. Sex refers to biological differences between men and women which are more or less same across and over time, but gender the socially constructed difference and relations between male and female varies greatly from place to place and from time to time. Gender can therefore be defined as a notion that offers a set of frameworks within which feminist theory has explained the social and discursive construction and representation of differences between sexes. According to Mansfield, “Attention to gender results in renewed emphasis being placed on the local structure of knowledge that one cannot speak on behalf of humanity as a whole and therefore that the specific position cannot claim to represent universal values but rather extremely specific ones.”
Gender is not synonymous with which tries to analyse social patterns development process and men and women can be seen as using gender as a category of analysis. Gender is often used as another word for women. The implication is that the problem and hence the solution concerns only women.
By Gender is meant men and women as active social and economic agents in their own right with the underlying sets and patterns of interrelationships that define them as human beings. To understand the levels at which gender operates one must take a look at the family at interpersonal levels, and at the way society is divided into the public and private spheres. One must go production reproduction, beyond the family to each institution to understand how gender operates there. Gender relations are present in all types of institutions from the school, market, street, workplace to state and religious institutions. It is important to understand how gender structures these institutions. And we can begin to understand each specific set of gender relations we can begin to workout strategies to transform them. It is not useful to generalise from any given set of gender relations but to evolve a strategy from each context.
Factors that shape gender relations and provide different opportunities and constraints for men and women and create gender disparity are many. Detail analysis of all those factors is not required here.
Gender Disparity refers to structural relationship of inequality between men and women in the society. Men and women are similar, as both are human beings but their biological difference is so highlighted that all similarities are forgotten and socially constructed difference and relations between male and females are greatly highlighted. Thus, it is essential to effectively remove gender disparity from any society for its healthy growth.
When women have more schooling, the returns flow not only to themselves but to the next generation as well. Female education is not encouraged so much in India because most parents tend to behave that education would make a girl less attentive to household chores and less willing to obey her parents and her husband. The doubts are institutionalised in female value system, as parents of educated girls must offer a high amount of dowry in order to attract better educated and well placed men.
Female are also under valued in society that their education generally gets neglected. Girls are expected to mind their young sibling and help mothers in household chores as far as possible. The Gender gap in education can be understood in the wider context of female disadvantage in India. Gender bias pervades all spheres of life and society and influences political decision making as well as intra-familial attitudes and values. The nature and intensity of this bias varies across economic systems and regions and over the life cycle of the individuals within households. This bias has been variously explained by cultural and religious factors as also by the position occupied by women in the labour market. Whatever the particular combination of causes may be the cycle of disadvantage starts before birth and continues from neglect of female children to widowhood.
The Obstacles to Gender Parity
Across the country the attendance, participation and success of the girls in schools is far outpaced by boys. Girls remain disadvantaged in education in more than one ways.
1. More than boys' girls are often required to help with chores care for the sick and for the younger siblings.
2. Grinding poverty is the single biggest obstacle to education for both boys and girls. But when there is shortage of money in the family, preference is given to boys over girls.
3. In rural areas girls will dropout of schools because of the insecurity of walking long distances to school.
4. Attendance is frequently interrupted by temporary suspension for non-payment of fees, arriving late to school or being in tattered clothes.
5. Girls performance is also affected by cultural norms biased curricula and discrimination in teaching methods.
All these create together negative environment that gradually pushes the girl out of school. The biggest question here is that how to bring these left out students back to schools so that the cycle of gender discrimination can be broken.
· The more laissez faire approach sees gender emancipation in general as a natural fall out of economic development. It is argued that the status of women, including their educational status will improve as a consequence of their increasing participation in labour market and development process.
· The second more activist strategy seeks the empowerment of women, either individually or through their involvement in institutions, organisations and collectives. This will increase their visibility and give them more autonomy and bargaining power within the household and in the society.
· It could be argued that political indifference, bureaucratic inertia rather than poverty and discriminating cultural practices are equally valid reasons for India's poor performance in reducing gender gaps in education.
There are high Gender disparities in literacy levels in India. The available statistics provide adequate evidence to argue that there continues to be considerable gaps literacy by sex in India. Female literacy at national levels has risen steadily from mere 8% in 1951 to 54% in 2001. Although the gender disparity is declining over the years at the national level but vast differences exists across regions over the years.



Gender Gaps in Literacy in Selected States: India
StateState
Gender Gap (Per cent)
1991 2001
Bihar
29.6 29.75
M.P.
29.6 26.52
Haryana
28.6 22.94
Orissa
28.4 24.98
Rajasthan
34.6 32.12
U.P.
30.4 27.25
India
24.4 21.69

It is evident from the table given above that there has been considerable improvement in the situation. However, the differential in male female literacy is still substantial in India 21.69% according to Census 2001. In Rajasthan it is as high as 32.12 per cent. The situation in other parts of the world is not very different. UNESCO (2006) recently estimated that 43 million school age girls are not enrolled in schooling many more complete fewer than 6 years of schooling and a gap between boys and girls remains in some countries. This gap is due overwhelming to the lag in schooling of socially excluded groups, often minority groups that are on the margins of society, and in which girls are at a distinct disadvantages relative to boys. Indeed, we estimate that approximately 70 per cent of these out-of-school girls come from such groups. Enrolment rates of women lag behind those of men in 63 countries out of 130 countries for which the UNESCO has data. The data also reveal that of the nearly 137 million illiterate youths in the world, 63 Percent are female. The female to male literacy ratio is lowest in sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East and North Africa, and South Asia. Now the question is, who are they? Obviously they are from the scheduled caste, scheduled tribes and other backward castes in rural areas. Here the major question is why is it so?
Reasons for Gender Disparity in Education
Reasons are complex and many to list some of them:
v Uneducated parents
v Irrelevant education
v A need for child labour and apprenticeship with in family farms/business
v Direct costs of fees, books, and uniforms.
v General resistance to change
v A desire to retain a separate ethnic identity
v Limited employment opportunities
v Low economic returns to those who attended schools
v Lack of accessible and acceptance schools
v Concern for safety especially adolescent girls
v Girls are married away and join their husband's family
v More dropout due to discrimination and mistreatment
v Educated girls find it difficult to get match for marriage.
Reaching and teaching excluded girls-
1. Make education policies fair.
2. Expand schooling options:
School timing to suit the local requirement informal alternative schools can attract schools from excluded groups more easily then schools located at a distance. For example, in Rajasthan, community schools that employed paraprofessional teachers allowed the community to select and supervise teachers and hired part time workers to escort girls from excluded groups to school had higher enrolment attendance and test scores to public schools.
3. Improve physical environment and instructional materials
Girls are less likely than boys to enrol in and more likely to dropout of schools that are in poor physical condition (for example with leaky roof) whose teachers are often absent and with inadequate materials. And those who stay in schools under these circumstances especially if only the majority language is taught tend to perform poorly.
In fact studies show that schools quality matters more for excluded girls.
4. Gender-of the teacher's matter.
5. Incentives for household to send girls to schools offer conditional cash transfer (School feeding mid day meal) scholarships and stipends for girls. They have been highly effective in Bangladesh scholarships for girls increased their enrolment to twice the national average for females. There are evidence of higher literacy rates and gender parity among youth (ages 15-24). But Gender gaps remain the present system of fixing macroeconomic targets does not categorically discuss and have sufficient data at national level on gender difference. Two recent IMF studies focus on the interaction between gender and macroeconomics and gender and budget processes. It is not that obvious how to go about incorporating gender differences in economic behaviour and policy outcomes into macroeconomic policymaking. After all in macroeconomics, one typically looks at the aggregate, or overall, economy. But economists are now taking a much stronger interest in how gender affects aggregate income as well as key components of overall economic demand, focusing on household decision making.
Although the evidence about the relationship between women's inferior status and growth is not fully conclusive but a World Bank study suggests that countries that take steps to increase women's access to education, health care, employment and credit increase their pace of development and reduce poverty[1]. One way for countries to pinpoint policies to reduce gender disparities and adopt policy for gender budgeting which involves the systematic examination of the budget programmes and policies for their impact on women.
6. Budgeting for Gender
In 1995 Beijing World Conference on Women this demand received a big push. This type of budgeting promotes greater accountability on how governments are doing in terms of promoting gender equality and helps ensure that budgets and policies are geared toward achieving gender equality. It is not intended to analyse only programmes that are specially targeted to females or to produce a separate "women's" budget. Rather, it is intended to examine the gender effects of all government programmes and policies. Many persons may not agree to this suggestion and may raise their voice to argue why budget with only gender in mind? What about other groups in the population whose interests may have received insufficient attention? In principal, the budget processes should take into account the elimination of any disparities that are socially harmful. Some groups have organised themselves to assert their interests. What is clear is that there is no such thing as a gender-neutral government budget. Many Government proposals affect or burden women more than men knowingly or unknowingly e.g. provision for clean water, school fees, health care.
Is there an economic justification for gender budgeting? It is difficult to answer but one thing is clear that will create a fairer society.
How gender budgets have faired?
Since 1984, some 40 countries from all regions of the world have tried some form of gender budgeting, typically at the national level but in some cases at the subnational level the initiatives have been led by the government (the executive or legislative branch) or by civil society. Most of these initiatives have focused on the spending side of the budget, but a few countries have looked at the revenue side as well.
Australia was the first country to formally incorporate gender budgeting by developing countries the concept of a woman's budget. South Africa followed suit in 1995 as a part of its push to eliminate inequalities following the end of apartheid. One tangible result in South Africa was the elimination of gender discrimination from the personal income tax, where some women were taxed more heavily than men with equivalent income. In European Union, gender equality has long been a priority, with gender-budgeting initiatives under way in a number of countries, including in Scandinavia and Spain. Other initiatives include the Women's budget Group in the United Kingdom, which comments on the fiscal policies of each annual budget. In India, researchers have assessed the adequacy of budgetary programs to address women's needs and reduce gender disparities. In Mexico, non-governmental organisations have worked with federal and state governments combine solid academic analysis with advocacy for gender equality and poverty reduction within the budgetary context and in Rwanda gender-budgeting initiatives is used to inform the national debate about policy and allocation of the resources.
Summary
We conclude Women face discrimination at all levels in all Countries. In many cases, such policies are needed that policies that remove gender-specific barriers, thus ensuring a more level playing field for males and females. This requires budgetary expenditures to scale up policies and monitor progress in attaining targets set for MDGs. Gender budgeting should be incorporated into standard budget processes so that it becomes fully institutionalised as individual initiatives adopted with enthusiasm may not be sustained. The gender budgeting should cover both spending and revenue. Government should monitor the progress of all MDGs regularly so that we achieve the targets.
References
Janet Stotsky, Janet G. (2007) “Why using the Budget to Empower Women makes good Economic Sense”. F&D, June.
Buvinic, Mayra and Elizabeth, M. King, (2007) “Smart Economics” F&D, June.
World Bank, (2005), World Development Report- 2006, Equity & Development, OUP, New York.
UNESCO, (2006) “Global Monitoring Report: Strong foundation:, Early Childhood Education”, Paris.

[1] World Bank (2001) Engendering Development: Through Gender Equality in Rights, Resources and Voice, Oxford University Press, New York, and also Klasen, Stephan (2007) Pro-Poor Growth and Gender Inequality: Insights from new Research, Poverty in Focus, International Poverty Centre, March, pp 5-7.