Until last year’s budget, the Union government touted 'Nari Shakti' (women’s power) as central to its development agenda. It appears that they have now forsaken this goal – and perhaps for good reason – as the government has been unable to justify how it allocates and spends on critical welfare programs for women and girls. This is especially concerning for measures that promote their safety, well-being, and right to access justice. 

Crimes against women have increased at an average rate of 4% between 2019 and 2023, as per the National Crime Records Bureau’s Crime in India reports. Further, one in three women in India face domestic violence, but less than 10% of these women are seeking help from formal authorities like police, courts and hospitals. 

Current budgetary trends for key women’s safety programs misrepresent the need to address this urgent public health and human rights issue. We must, therefore, seek state accountability for how its programs prevent and respond to violence against women/girls and other forms of discrimination.

Trends in spending after safety programs were merged in 2021-22

In 2021-22, the nodal ministry merged several of its programs on women’s “safety, security and empowerment” under the umbrella scheme of Mission Shakti with two sub-schemes: Sambal for safety and security, and Samarthya for empowerment. The direct consequence of this merging exercise is that the ministry’s expenditure budget does not provide disaggregated allocations and expenditures for programs under these merged sub-schemes, making it difficult to measure progress and prioritisation for program-specific goals. 

For instance, programs such as Beti Bachao Beti Padhao, One Stop Centre, Nari Adalat, and Women Helpline (181) were merged under Sambal. The Union government’s budget only reports allocations for the sub-schemes – Sambal and Samarthya, without sharing detailed descriptions and allocations for the programs under it.

The ministry’s budget expenditures (or allocations) for Sambal reveal a grim picture of its utilisation rates (the proportion of budgeted expenditure spent) since the merging exercise in 2021-22 (Figure 1). Despite low allocations for Sambal programs to begin with – constituting only 2.2% of the nodal Ministry’s budgeted expenditure for 2026-27 – it has spent only about a third of the allocated funds in most years.

Figure 1: For most years, only about a third of allocations were spent on the Sambal sub-scheme

This picture resonates with the utilisation trends across Sambal programs (Figure 2), as per a Lok Sabha Question reply on Schemes for Safety of Women dated December 5, 2025. The proportion of budgeted expenditure spent peaked in 2023-24, but fell again in 2024-25 and 2025-26. No Sambal program has ever spent its full allocations.

Figure 2: Spending is declining for all Sambal programs since 2023-24

It is also worth noting that the allocations for the One Stop Centre and the Women Helpline programs comprise more than 60% of Sambal’s share, followed by Beti Bachao Beti Padhao (~35-40% across years) and Nari Adalat (

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