A Personal Journey into Public Finance
The author, a senior economist who contributed a chapter to the 2026 volume *Women in Public Financial Management* by former IMF economist Manal Fouad and Maja Bosnic, shares a deeply personal story that underpins her professional achievements. Born into a traditional Muslim family in India, she was abandoned by her father at age three, a trauma that would later inform her commitment to gender‑inclusive public policy.
Early Life and Education
Her mother, a nurse in a government hospital, and her father, a space engineer at ISRO, separated when the author was a toddler. The divorce was communicated by post, and the mother raised two children alone under difficult economic conditions. Despite these hardships, she instilled a strong emphasis on education. The author earned a Bachelor’s in Economics on a merit scholarship, followed by a Master’s with a national merit scholarship, and a research fellowship in 1995. She completed a PhD at a national university and met her future partner in a campus hostel.
Breaking Ground at the Ministry of Finance
In 2000, after completing her doctoral residency, she joined the research institute of India’s Ministry of Finance in New Delhi. Her first assignment was to lead a UN‑funded project on *gender budgeting*, a concept then considered “an oxymoron” by many economists. Working without weekends and balancing her PhD thesis, she championed the integration of gender perspectives into public finance.
Institutionalising Gender Budgeting
The author’s efforts culminated in 2004 when she served on the Classification of Budgetary Transactions Committee, invited by the then Chief Economic Adviser. The committee’s recommendations led to the 2005‑06 Budget Speech announcing India’s formal launch of gender budgeting. She drafted the Methodology Manual for the Department of Women and Child Development, training representatives from 29 states, and later collaborated with UN Women on further training.
Global Impact and Recognition
Her expertise extended beyond India. She led cross‑country studies on fiscal decentralisation and local‑level gender budgeting for the UN in the Philippines, Morocco, Mexico, South Africa, Vietnam, Canada, and Sweden. In 2016, the UN Secretary‑General’s High‑Level Panel recognised gender budgeting as a tool for women’s economic empowerment; the author contributed a background paper and presented in Geneva.
She also headed the IMF’s 2016 global survey on gender budgeting in the Asia‑Pacific region. Her standing in the field was further cemented by elections to the governing board of the International Institute of Public Finance in 2020 and 2023.
Why It Matters
The author’s narrative illustrates how personal adversity can fuel systemic change. By embedding gender lenses in budgeting, India has moved from treating budgets as neutral arbiters to recognising them as active agents of inclusion or exclusion. Her work has helped decolonise public financial management tools, making them more responsive to the needs of women in the Global South.
What to Watch
The continued evolution of gender budgeting in India will likely involve deeper integration of gender data into fiscal planning and expanded training for state and local governments. Internationally, the author’s ongoing involvement with the International Institute of Public Finance suggests further collaboration on comparative studies and best‑practice sharing.
Context
Gender budgeting emerged in India after the 2000 Time Use Survey highlighted that women aged 15‑59 spent three times more on unpaid domestic work than men. These findings, combined with Amartya Sen’s work on the “missing women,” underscored the need for policy tools that address gender disparities.
Closing
The author credits her mother, Salma, for instilling resilience and a belief in education as a path to empowerment. Her story, now part of a global anthology on women in public finance, serves as a powerful reminder that the most transformative policy innovations often arise from deeply personal experiences.