Budget Training and Advocacy

The Budget training and advocacy evolved much as a part of an unplanned activity during the last three years. The work of CEHAT on health financing had led to the developing of a literature on health budgets, financing and expenditure issues, including large field based studies to generate primary data. CEHAT has also developed a database of public health expenditures for all states from 1951. CEHAT has been conducting trainings and involved in advocacy on budgets among people to raise awareness and mobilize them for demanding higher allocations to social sector especially health. Through the Budget Praxis initiative which was conducted under the Establishing Health As A Human Right project, CEHAT established a network among people’s organizations and civil society groups in Maharashtra. Several trainings and workshops were organised to raise the capacity of the people at the district level to understand budgets. The trainings built the capacity of the participants who were people from the networks and people working in grassroots organization, government staff, etc, to do situation analysis of the budget and expenditure at their respective district-level, to be able to identify gaps in resources allocation and get directly involved in advocacy in their constituencies along with other organizations at the local level.

Through this project, CEHAT intends to expand this work on Budget training and advocacy to two other states besides continuing the activities in Maharashtra. The activities would involve providing need-based inputs and trainings at local level, consultations on social sector budgets at regional level among groups, sharing meetings on the budget process at the district level among the members in the network and expand the local network by involving more members, and support targeted events at local level to influence budget process. In collaboration with local groups CEHAT would initiate state-level briefings on the social sector budget among legislators, bureaucrats to influence resource allocation.