Rural women planting seeds of change
When Sharad Pawar, India's minister for agriculture sat down in Rome this Spring for the twentieth session of the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation or decided to import five million tonnes of wheat at a higher price rather than rely on local grain production, he clearly did not have women like Kamala and Rambati on his mind.
Kamala and Rambati are making determined steps towards ending hunger by ensuring women in their villages have land titles and a say in decisions which affect their lives. But they need support from Mr Pawar and his counterparts if this is to translate into widespread and enduring change.
As the main food producers, women's access to land and natural resources is a key factor in eradicating hunger and rural poverty, but progress on this front remains erratic and inadequate. Decades of discrimination have also placed women firmly amongst the poorest of the poor.
Unheeded recommendations
Landmark recommendations from international forums like the Geneva Summit for Rural Women in 1992 and the 1996 World Food Summit were intended to mobilize political will and resources and to target rural women as participants in and beneficiaries of development programs. Despite these suggestions, empowerment of women farmers has a long way to go.
In India the need for action is clear. Some 70% of the female workforce is engaged in agriculture yet only 10% of women farmers own land. At the same time one in four Indians go to bed hungry.
The Government of India has acknowledged that improved access to land and natural resources, especially by women, is a key factor in eradicating hunger and rural poverty [1] but so far this has not been matched with the necessary action.
India's Land Reform Act passed in 1954 shortly after independence, addresses land rights for dalits and other marginalised groups. But it makes scant mention of women and anyway has not been implemented.
Policy patchwork
Currently India has a patchwork of Acts guiding women's property and land rights in line with different religious and customary practices. Laws vary from state to state and between caste, religion and ethnic group. Yet none of them succeed in meeting women's constitutional right to equal and non-discriminatory access to these means.
As a result, women and children are being left destitute or at best in highly unequal bargaining positions within the family and wider community.
The situation is compounded by a neo-liberal growth model which has widened the gap between haves and have-nots and put women and men in the firing line. Nandigram where at least 14 people lost their lives threw a stark spotlight on community struggles to protect land from being grabbed for Special Economic Zones.
Under threat
Women in Jagatsingpur district of Orissa are guarding barricades to prevent government officials from taking over their villages for South Korean steel giant POSCO.
'Primitive Tribal Groups' in another part of Orissa are awaiting a ruling from India's Supreme Court on Vedanta – a company whose bauxite mining plans are threatening their way of life.
Not only food security but the entire identity of the distinctive Kondh people is interwoven with the forest, streams and mineral-rich mountain of Niyamgiri which they worship as a god. Local women who meet in their thousands are at the heart of this struggle against corporate might.
People's progress
Since the mid-70s, calls for women's land rights gained strength with social movements such as Bodhgaya in Bihar at the forefront. In 1977, mass mobilization and judicial intervention led to a landmark ruling paving the way for joint pattas (land titles) in the name of both men and women.
Today in the village of Nuaput, in Orissa's Koraput district, Adivasi women are using this victory to take their own small steps towards land ownership.
Supported by ActionAid through local organisation SPREAD, villagers have applied for joint pattas so that both husband and wife will have a legal claim on the land they use. Kamala Matan explains the significance:
"This patta gives us strength. We don't fear the men now – they can't threaten us with throwing us out (of the home) now," she says. "And other people can learn from us… When we get the patta we can claim land and after us, our children will inherit."
In the Shivpuri district of Madhya Pradesh, 35-year-old Rambati an emerging leader in the poverty-stricken Sahariya community (a 'primitive tribal group' in which men typically marry twice) shares her concerns:
"If the government doesn't give ownership of land to women, what will happen to the first wife? How will she manage her and her children's lives?"
In 1995 the chief minister of Madhya Pradesh announced pattas for tribals and landless labourers in the state. Since then, partly due to persistent demands from local women, joint land titles are slowly increasing. Despite this favourable legislation, many Sahariyas are still struggling for their right to land.
Action on all fronts
While local women's groups are having some success in securing and defending land and national level dialogue between concerned citizens is underway – including an innovative initiative Consult for Women and Land Rights which encourages women to mobilize around land issues – this needs to be met with government action.
In India activists (women and men) are calling for a review of laws related to women's land and property rights and collective land ownership, accompanied by affirmative action to implement policies and practices that will help tackle hunger and poverty.
ActionAid has also written to Sharad Pawar and his fellow G77 agriculture ministers - the largest group of developing countries in the United Nations – urging them to use their voice in global forums to support specific measures including convening intergovernmental regional roundtables on women's rights to land and natural resources and establishing a database system on land tenure and agrarian reforms to capture the global picture and monitor progress.
Photo credit: Tom Pietrasik/ActionAid
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[1] GOI acknowledged the need for improved access to land and natural resources, especially by women, in the framework of international commitments at World Food Summit 1996 and its Plan of Action; in the Voluntary Guidelines on the Implementation of the Right to Food unanimously adopted by FAO Council; and most recently at the FAO International Conference on Agrarian Reform and Rural Development (ICARRD) that was hosted by Brazil in March 2006.
