Comment | Centring care in India’s economic policy

Expanding childcare centres, eldercare support, and assistive technologies would ease women’s care burden, and boost their workforce participation. Representational file image.
| Photo Credit: R. V. Moorthy

The Union Budget for 2025 allocated a record ₹4,49,028.68 crore to the Gender Budget (GB), marking a 37.3% increase from FY24 and accounting for 8.86% of the total Budget. This rise is primarily due to the inclusion of the PM Garib Kalyan Anna Yojana, which accounts for 24% of the GB, rather than being driven by substantial investments in care infrastructure or new gender-responsive schemes. Despite this increase, critical investments in care infrastructure remain absent, reinforcing the persistent invisibilisation of care work in India’s economic planning. While the Economic Surveys of 2023-24 and 2024-25 highlight care infrastructure as central to women’s empowerment, the current Budget misses the opportunity to make tangible investments to strengthen India’s care economy in line with its socio-economic realities.

Globally, women spend an average of 17.8% of their time on unpaid care and domestic work (UCDW), with women in the Global South bearing higher burdens. India is especially concerning, as Indian women shoulder 40% more of this burden than their counterparts in South Africa and China. The International Labour Organization reports that 53% of Indian women remain outside the labour force due to care responsibilities, compared to just 1.1% of men, underscoring entrenched inequities. For poor and marginalised women, this burden is severe as women in low-income families often juggle 17–19 hours of daily tasks, balancing paid work with domestic duties, intensifying ‘time poverty’, and eroding their well-being.

Feminist economists from the Global South emphasise that unpaid work in these regions encompasses a broader range of tasks compared to the Global North, extending beyond household care giving to include work on family farms, water and fuel collection, cleaning, and cooking. Limited access to essential infrastructure — such as water, clean energy, and sanitation — means women spend up to 73% of their time on these unpaid activities. For example, women spend nearly five hours daily collecting water, compared to 1.5 hours for men. Climate change exacerbates this burden, with water-related unpaid labour in India projected to reach $1.4 billion by 2050 under a high-emissions scenario. This stems from low public investment in care infrastructure and entrenched social norms that assign care work to women.

Solutions ahead

The Economic Survey 2023-24 highlights that direct public investment equivalent to 2% of GDP could generate 11 million jobs while easing the care burden. Applying the expanded ‘Three R framework’—Recognise, Reduce, Redistribute, and Represent — can ensure policies are both contextually relevant and transformative. The first step is recognising the full spectrum of UCDW women perform. India’s 2019 Time Use Survey marked a milestone in acknowledging this issue, revealing that women spend an average of seven hours daily on UCDW. Despite the policy benefits that these surveys carry, their costs can make implementation challenging. One solution is to integrate Time-use modules into existing household surveys.

The second step is reducing the UCDW burden through time-saving technologies and expanded access to affordable care infrastructure. The Centre has acknowledged gaps in access to essential services by extending the Jal Jeevan Mission (JJM) until 2028, aiming for 100% potable water coverage. However, funding delays and underutilisation hinder implementation. While the scheme’s Budget declined by 4.51% from last year’s Budget Estimates (BE), it saw a 195% jump over Revised Estimates (RE), highlighting allocation-spending gaps. With less than half of villages having functional household tap connections, JJM requires stronger implementation and water sustainability measures.

Expanding childcare centres, eldercare support, and assistive technologies would ease women’s care burden, and boost their workforce participation.

The third key step is redistributing care work — from the home to the State and within households. The newly announced ₹1 lakh crore Urban Challenge Fund, with ₹10,000 crore allocated for FY 2025-26, can be transformative. This will finance up to 25% of bankable projects, encouraging private and public sector participation in urban redevelopment, water, and sanitation initiatives. By leveraging this fund, India can scale up pilot care infrastructure models already under way through the Smart Cities Mission. Taking inspiration from Bogotá’s Care Blocks, which centralise care giving services to reduce women’s unpaid work, this approach aligns with the fund’s broader goal of sustainable urban development.

Finally, women’s representation in decision-making and implementation is crucial for creating gender-transformative policies. Excluding women from this leaves them vulnerable to policies that fail to address their lived realities. In fact, involving women in decision-making processes enhances their effectiveness significantly, sometimes by six to seven times.

With the Centre’s emphasis on Nari Shakti as a driver of economic growth, India has the opportunity to set a global example for a gender and care-sensitive economy. However, the current Budget falls short by not prioritising care as a central pillar. A more deliberate, well-funded strategy is necessary to ensure that care work is not treated as an afterthought but as a core component of inclusive growth

.Sreerupa is a Research Fellow and Program Lead at Institute of Social Studies Trust, and Harshita is an Associate, Public Policy at TQH (The Quantum Hub) Consulting