Gender budgeting is a public policy innovation to transform the gender commit-ments into budgetary commitments. The political economy process of gender budget-ing in India has encompassed four distinct phases - innovative knowledge networking, building institutional structures, reinforcing state capacity and strengthening the ac-countability mechanisms. Against these policy processes, we have estimated the sec-tor-wise quantum of gender budgeting in India emphasising the statistical invisibility of care economy. The State-wise equally distributed equavalent (Xede) estimates of gen-der development showed that Kerala tops the scale 0-1 scoring 0.72. Though the link between gender budgeting and these Xede scores is beyond the scope of the paper, the fiscal marksmanship of gender budgeting showed a mixed scenario across sectors. The fiscal marksmanship of gender budgeting showed an upward bias in the errors in the projections relate to education, social justice empowerment and health, and down-ward bias in agriculture, petroleum and natural gas. These deviations between BE and RE in gender budgeting has significant policy implications for better state capacity and governance.

JEL Classification Numbers: H00, H77, I3, J16

Keywords: Gender Budgeting, Fiscal Marksmanship, Gender Inequality, Inter-gov-ernmental Fiscal Transfers, Care Economy, Political Economy