The safety fund nobody spends
India created a dedicated fund for women's safety after 2012. Depending on the official source, it is either 76% spent or barely a fifth spent — same fund, same year, different denominators. A look at how one number becomes three, and where the money for women's safety actually sits.
The Nirbhaya Fund was set up in 2013, in the aftermath of the December 2012 Delhi gang-rape, as a pool of money ring-fenced for women's safety — emergency helplines, one-stop crisis centres, fast-track courts, safe-city projects. More than a decade on, the obvious question is simple: has the money been spent? The answer is where it gets slippery.
The same fund is officially "76% utilised," "70% utilised," or "about a fifth utilised" — all true, and all measured against different bases. The government's cheerful figure divides spending by the budget allocated. A parliamentary committee, dividing by the value of approved projects, found under 40% disbursed. The gap between the three numbers is the story.
It depends what you divide by
Every "utilisation" percentage for the Nirbhaya Fund is a fraction, and everyone reporting it picks a different bottom half. Measure spending against the budget allocated and you get the government's ~76%. Measure it against the money actually released to states and ministries and you land around 70%. Measure it against the far larger value of approved projects and it collapses to roughly 20–31%. None is wrong; each answers a different question.
View data table
| Utilisation measured against… | Share |
|---|---|
| Approved project cost | ~25% |
| Funds released | ~70% |
| Budget allocation | ~76% |
Allocated, then not spent
Hold the denominator steady — budget allocation — and track it over time, and the shape is a persistent gap between what was set aside and what was used. Cumulative allocation roughly doubled between the early years and 2024-25; utilisation rose too, but always trailing, always leaving a cushion of unspent money for women's safety sitting in the system.
View data table
| As of | Utilised (₹ cr) | Allocated (₹ cr) |
|---|---|---|
| ~2021 | 2,922 | 5,713 |
| 2024-25 | 5,846 | 7,713 |
Underneath the totals, specific schemes tell the sharpest version of the story. One tranche of fast-track special courts saw funds released to eleven states and not one rupee spent. A vehicle-tracking safety platform reached 19 states and used about an eighth of the money. Four large states used none of their allotted safe-city funds. The pattern the Standing Committee named was blunt: money parked, coordination poor, "no permanent scheme" built.
What this data can and can't tell you
- Never put the three percentages on one line. ~25%, ~70%, and ~76% are not a trend or a disagreement about facts — they are three different fractions of the same spending, divided by approved cost, released funds, and allocation respectively. Each is honest; mixing them is not.
- "Allocated" itself is ambiguous. The budget corpus (~₹7,713 cr) is smaller than the appraised value of approved projects (~₹9,300 cr). The government tends to quote the smaller base (making utilisation look higher); the Standing Committee used the larger one.
- The 2025 figure blends released and utilised. The most recent official release does not separate money moved from money spent, so the true "spent" share that year can't be independently checked from it.
- State and scheme figures come from different vintages. Utilisation numbers from 2020, 2021, and 2022 use different bases and dates; keep them in separate comparisons rather than one ranking.
- Low utilisation is not the whole harm. Money spent is not the same as safety delivered — but unspent money is at least an unambiguous signal that the intended safety infrastructure was not built on time.
The defensible claim: more than a decade after the fund was created, a large share of the money earmarked for women's safety remains unspent on any honest denominator, and specific safety schemes have gone entirely unused — while the headline "76%" quietly picks the base that flatters it most.
- Ministry of Women & Child Development — cumulative allocation and utilisation (2025).
- Parliamentary Standing Committee on Home Affairs (2021) — 38.55% disbursed against approved projects (via SabrangIndia).
- Lok Sabha replies and Open Government Data — year-wise allocation; Down To Earth — released-funds utilisation; Accountability India — ministry- and scheme-wise underuse.
ImpactMojo Data (2026). "The safety fund nobody spends." ImpactMojo Data Dives. Retrieved from https://impactmojo.in/DataDives/the-safety-fund-nobody-spends.html
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