Dear All,

Land rights are upheld by the state, as sovereignty of the state over land is accepted in India. Though there is no specific mention about state’s sovereignty over land in the Indian Constitution. Therefore one the first concern is, whether every policy, action and decision on land is gender just. Whether rights of women have been taken into consideration while taking any policy decision and while implementing any policy or preparing budgets, financial allocations.

Since the sustainable development goals (SDG), especially goal 15, Life on Land) has recognised land as a resource and socio-economic and political processes that need to be addressed in order to ensure land rights, we are on a platform that provides recognition to women’s land rights (WLR). Thus at global level, conceptually issues of WLR are on sound platform. Now it is important that we share our micro level/grassroots experiences and learning, especially how patriarchal structures and processes need to be addressed/altered in order to achieve WLR, with support of the state.

We invite you to join us and pitch in anywhere between micro and macro levels—anecdotes, learning, strategies, struggles, policies and what heart has to say!!!

The SDGs has bought focus on building indicators[1] related to land access and discrimination under Goal 1 (end poverty and its forms everywhere) and Goal 5 (Achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls).

Women’s access and rights on productive resources specifically land are essential for gender-responsive implementation of Sustainable Development and for furthering their role as workers, producers and as economic agents.

Rural women work in crop production and livestock care, provide food, water and fuel for the household through hours of unseen and unrecognized work. Their role in achieving food and nutrition security for the household is far greater than men who are entitled to land and other resources as their ‘birthright’ while women are discriminated against entitlements and rights to ownership of land due to patriarchal norms, values and practices. For women, access to land and ownership has been denied across cultures and social groups owing to discriminatory inheritance laws. Notwithstanding changes to many of these laws including amendment to the Hindu Succession Act in 2005, women’s access to family agricultural land through inheritance is limited and remains just around 10 per cent of the total operational holdings.

Women’s access to land and secure tenures will increase their resilience to withstand growing climatic stress and ensure food security to the family as they are more concerned about ensuring household food security. Many tudies have shown that women prefer cultivation of food crops over cash crops as their primary concern is towards ensuring household food security.

Individual land rights are important for all women but its significance is far greater for single women. The 2011 Census indicate 71 million single women (unmarried, divorced, separated or widowed) and their number have risen by 39% over the previous decade. A piece of land in their name can help single women in rural areas to a life of dignity, with access to credit and other agricultural inputs, benefits from government programmes such as MGNREGA which provide individual livelihood assets such as cowsheds, wells and plantation (for which the beneficiary household has to have some land in own name), while landless live a life of dependence and in many cases in abject poverty.

[1] Indicator 1.4.2: Proportion of total adult population with secure tenure rights to land, with legally recognized documentation and who perceive their rights to land as secure, by sex and by type of tenure (disaggregated by sex and type of tenure) Indicator 5.a.1 (a) Proportion of total agricultural population with ownership or secure rights over agricultural land, by sex; and (b) share of women among owners or rights-bearers of agricultural land, by type of tenure. Indicator 5.a.2 Proportion of countries where the legal framework (including customary law) guarantees women’s equal rights to land ownership and/or control.

It is tremendously important to conjoin these issues. Looked at as a conglomerate, there are some solutions to be had, in an efficient manner. But if kept separate, these issues will continue to vex every successful administration and organisation involved in addressing these issues.  The Voluntary Guidelines on the Responsible Governance of Tenure of Land, Fisheries and Forests in the Context of National Food Security (VGGT) is, as the name suggests, all about conjoining tenure rights with food security, alleviation of poverty and preventing environmental degradation, the lynchpin is women’s rights to tenure, reforming custom to ensure gender equality, ensuring gendered participation in collective properties and public property management and use and enabling restitution, readjustment and allocation programmes to recognise and priorities women’s shares and rights. Every tool of land governance should be applied in a gender sensitive manner, and it should be properly implemented in case of disputes, by courts that are enlightened enough to strategically promote women’s land rights.      

I have almost no experience with women’s land rights, except perhaps in the limited case of Forest Rights Act, where FRA title is recognised in the name of both the husband and wife, and single women and widows where they are head of the family. So I am not sure whether I can contribute anything of substance, at this stage of the discussion, although, this is clearly an opportunity to learn a little more about it.  While the following are general observations, I drew these specifically in the context of some discussions I have had with people working at the grassroots level, community leaders, as well as NGO workers, on issues of rights of the poor and the marginalised, including women, in remote corners of the country.

I am generally apprehensive of special legislations or govt programmes aimed at special category of citizens who are deemed vulnerable. Surely women, and men, and all other categories, ought to enjoy equal rights. If some individuals or a group are unable to enjoy equality before the law, then the problem could be either institutional, or societal. Institutional challenges lie when the law itself does not recognise equal rights, for instance, if there is discrepancy in inheritance laws, or restrictions on some category of people to own certain resources like land, etc.

Societal challenges can be rarely dealt with purely legislative or administrative measures, without a serious effort to respond to the societal issues effectively. One reason being that social dimensions inevitably colours perspective of those responsible for implementation, consequently they tend to over ride the legislative intentions during implementation on the ground. A second reason being that the vulnerable category of the population are hardly in a position to defend their rights in the midst of their community, particularly if the society around is not sensitive and supportive of those special rights. A third reason being that even where these special rights are implemented in letter and spirit by a committed local administration, this may actually make the vulnerable sections, such as destitute, single women, widows, etc, even more vulnerable. That is because endowed with new rights, and assets, the new right holder often becomes a target of others, who may want to claim those assets. Finally, such special rights legislations or administrative measures, invariably shifts the focus of the discourse away from the original nature and cause of the problem, to more immediate implementation challenges. But without a proper appreciation of the wider context, there can be little understanding of the real nature of these challenges.

For instance, dowry related laws have been greatly strengthened to protect the women. But there is little indication that these laws have been very effective in dealing with the original problem. On the other hand, these laws have given rise to growing abuse, which even the Supreme Court has had to recognise recently.

Or for instance, the now strengthened law aimed at protecting women against violence. There is little evidence so far that the law by itself has either offered greater protection to women, or that the institutional biases, or administrative efficiencies have been able to overcome the social context which is creating this kind of problem in the first place.

Similar seems to be the experience with laws against caste discrimination. Discrimination has persisted in different forms, while the special benefits aimed at helping the victims, have only perpetuated sense of victimhood, within the targeted beneficiaries, and the sense of discrimination has expanded to include many sections of the alleged perpetrators of these crimes.

Based on a limited exposure of land rights and tenure security for women in rural Bengal, some of the above discussions seem to have been borne out.

I would very much like to know more about instances of positive and negative impact of women’s land rights and secure tenure on income, food security, social acceptability, etc.

Dear Readers,

On Day 2 of the online discussion on WLR, its encouraging to receieve responses from two academicia and two development practioners. While more than two responses have agreed upon for the joint entitlements in land and property for women and men, the other sees critical aspect of conjoin rights in context with food and nutritional security of family in a household.

Dr. Chamundeeswari, a Senior Lecturer at the School of Law, and University Research Theme Champion for Global Economy at the Office of the Vice-Chancellor, University of Hertfordshire feels that unless WLR, food security and nutrition security are looked integratedly, efforts from the administration &/or organizations will not help. Poninting out importance of land rights of women for the fish farmers, forest dependent and in addition to the agricultural practitioners, she makes an important point that The Voluntary Guidelines on the Responsible Governance of Tenure of Land, Fisheries and Forests in the Context of National Food Security (VGGT) is all about conjoining tenure rights with food security, alleviation of poverty and preventing environmental degradation, the lynchpin is women’s rights to tenure, reforming custom to ensure gender equality, ensuring gendered participation in collective properties and public property management and use and enabling restitution, readjustment and allocation programmes to recognise and priorities women’s shares and rights.

Furthering the argument of Dr. Kupuswamy, Ms. Madhumita Ray, an expert on gender rights, reiterates that women’s land rights are crucial and there is substantive evidence that land ownership is intricately connected to hunger, deprivation and vulnerability. Mentioning the FAO/RAP study she establishes the connection between land ownership, hunger and poverty. Indicating gender division of land holding in India, she says that only 12.7% of land holdings are in the names of women, even though 77% women depend on agriculture as their primary source of income.  Based on her expertise on 'Gender', she touches upon the vital aspects of WLR and sexual & mariatal choices and violence on women. In her argument of discussing importance of land tenure and the current practice of unpaid work on part of women, she says that among the women who are employed as per NFHS Round III, more than one in five (22 percent) are not paid at all. The likelihood of being paid in cash varies greatly by the type of occupation. Only 31 percent of women doing agricultural work are paid only in cash and another 17 percent receive cash and in-kind payments. Equitable land tenure will play an important role in women demanding and getting fair and equal wages. Data shows that with regard to employment, women are doubly disadvantaged. Not only are women much less likely than men to be employed, when employed they are only 74 percent as likely as men to earn cash. The gender differential in cash earnings is much greater for those employed in agricultural work than in non-agricultural work.

Being critical of the land ditribution policy and programs, Mr. Sibarata Chaudhury says that land ownership (and asset ownership) is directly related to the poverty levels of households, for example a household with landed property is more likely to perform better in terms of food security and nutrition levels but land allocation programmes in India do not specifically consider women as beneficiaries. There are only a few examples of programmes aimed at allotting land to women, such as the Women Support Centre in few districts of Odisha that identified single women for homestead plots. However, major rural poverty alleviation programmes (such as MGNREGS, Skills development) hardly have any programmes designed specifically for women who do not own land, thus leaving them out of the purview of many these funded programmes. He further adds that in terms of power dynamics, tenure over land and other valuable property is a major determinant, both in rural and urban settings. Control over resources is determined by the legal ownership status. When women own a negligible portion of land, it affects their decision making both at household levels and public domain. With lower levels of ownership and access to property and resources, women’s participation in development programmes is not effective and empowerment goals are not achieved.

Mr. Barun Mitra, founder and director of the Liberty Institute, New Delhi makes his point by saying that he is generally apprehensive of special legislations or govt programmes aimed at special category of citizens who are deemed vulnerable but surely women, and men, and all other categories, ought to enjoy equal rights. If some individuals or a group are unable to enjoy equality before the law, then the problem could be either institutional, or societal. Institutional challenges lie when the law itself does not recognise equal rights, for instance, if there is discrepancy in inheritance laws, or restrictions on some category of people to own certain resources like land. Furthering his argument, he says that the societal challenges can be rarely dealt with purely legislative or administrative measures, without a serious effort to respond to the societal issues effectively. One reason being that social dimensions inevitably colours perspective of those responsible for implementation, consequently they tend to over ride the legislative intentions during implementation on the ground. A second reason being that the vulnerable category of the population are hardly in a position to defend their rights in the midst of their community, particularly if the society around is not sensitive and supportive of those special rights. A third reason being that even where these special rights are implemented in letter and spirit by a committed local administration, this may actually make the vulnerable sections, such as destitute, single women, widows, etc, even more vulnerable. That is because endowed with new rights, and assets, the new right holder often becomes a target of others, who may want to claim those assets. Finally, such special rights legislations or administrative measures, invariably shifts the focus of the discourse away from the original nature and cause of the problem, to more immediate implementation challenges. But without a proper appreciation of the wider context, there can be little understanding of the real nature of these challenges.  And he adds that he would very much like to know more about instances of positive and negative impact of women’s land rights and secure tenure on income, food security, social acceptability, etc.

As the summarised points above indicate further appetite to learn more on the issue of Women's Land Rights, we look forward to having more responses from one and all around the globe.

Warmly,

Sejal Dave

World over about 800 million people live in extreme poverty and women constitute about half the world’s population; most vulnerable in terms of impacts of poverty. Looking at women and their rights we can’t isolate land rights from right to education or health, we have to locate right rights within the rights basket and examine its impact. While SDG Goal five talks about gender equality, italso mentions that out of the 193 countries that have ratified the SGDs 1 (six goals mention regarding
land rights), Constitutions of about 143 countries guarantees equal rights for men and women. What is therefore important is to examine the factors that are governing the lack of gender equality, especially in terms of land rights of women. It’s of common knowledge that majority of women world-wide do not have ownership rights, yet they contribute most to the family land and the produce is used for the family. Then the very reason we are we looking at a situation where women need to own land is vital as ownership gives women the confidence to bargain for their rights. In many countries and even in India, women are given the user rights of land but the male relative (husband, son, father-in- law etc) owns the land. In this kind of a situation, women are vulnerable as the land on which the entire family is dependent, may get sold anytime without her consent living her without any livelihoods. However, both land and women are treated as ‘the Honour’ of the family and are to be owned. It is important to address this Patriarchal notion along with issue of generational social conditioning of women which leads to gender biases and violence against women due to land and property rights.

Experience at the field has reflected that working with women has led to many gains and there are clear instances that women who were supported and empowered to take action to claim their land and property rights have managed to get their rights. India has promulgated many land reforms laws and laws ensuring women’s rights, but in reality the
gap is at the implementation level. Land rights are legal and provide not only a sense of security among women and it gives them the confidence to voice their demands. In studies conducted among SHG members in the state of Odisha, women have expressed that they do not have a safety net due to lack of land and property rights therefore they are abused and are unable to take any steps to get out of this cycle over. Access to land also helps in women’s participation resulting in increasing their resilience to climate change and adoption of climate smart technologies. One of the great impediments is lack of awareness regarding women land rights. The government promoted women groups and federations through the National Rural Livelihoods Mission and State Rural

1 Goal 1, “end poverty in all its forms everywhere,” identifies the explicit link between poverty alleviation and access of the poor to means to strengthen land tenure security.
Goal 2, “end hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition, and promote sustainable agriculture,” emphasizes the importance of small-scale agricultural producers to feeding the world’s poor and vulnerable.
Goal 5, “achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls,” includes a sub-goal about women’s control over land.
Goal 10: Reduce inequality within and among countries. Goal 11: Make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient, and sustainable.  
Goal 15: Protect, restore, and promote sustainable use of terrestrial ecosystems, sustainably manage forests, combat desertification, and halt and reverse land degradation and halt biodiversity loss. 
Goal 16: Promote peaceful and inclusive societies for sustainable development, provide access to justice for all and build effective, accountable, and inclusive institutions at all levels.

Livelihood Missions that focuses on livelihoods promotion should be the platforms for land literacy to ensure empowering women and lending them the support to demand their own rights bringing about a greater social mobilisation. In Odisha the Women and Child Development Department has a programme, Mission Shakti through which 0.31 million SHGs with 4 million members Self Help Groups are promoted. These women could be reached with information regarding land related provisions and become land literate leasing to action at various levels.

I thank all contributors for the discussion and the valuable inputs. I am curious to understand if we can have any inputs regarding how do we define the indicators that would ensure that we can claim that women's Land rights leads to their empowerment and subsequently improve their nutrition, education and other development parameters.  By this I mean SDG indicators are set at a higher level, but how do we define indicators at the local level and capture data and evidences to substantiate our claim.

Looking forward to sharing of research outcomes and field experiences establishing the link between Women Land Rights and Nutrition Security.

As per the report of the sub group on Economic Empowerment of Women with focus on Land Rights, Property Rights and Inheritance Laws under Steering Committee on 'Women's Agency and Child Rights' for the Twelfth Five Year Plan - Women’s importance in agricultural production both as workers and as farm managers has been growing in the last two decades, as more men move to non-farm jobs leading to an increased feminization of agriculture. Today 48% of all male workers are in agriculture as against 75% of all female workers, and this gap is rising. Further, an estimated 20 percent of rural households in India are de facto female headed, due to widowhood, desertion, or male out-migration. These women are often managing land and livestock and providing subsistence to their family with little male assistance. Hence agricultural productivity is increasingly dependent on the ability of women to function effectively as farmers.

However ownership of land is concentrated mostly in male hands in India’s patriarchal society. Asset ownership and control patterns suggest men more likely to inherit, own, control and manage larger areas of land, cattle and more valuable animals compared to women. Women's activities are limited to small household plots and smaller animals such as goats and poultry.  It has been estimated that in India, landownership in favour of women[i] is not more than 9.3 %[ii]. Lack of entitlement to land (and other assets such as house, livestock, and so on) is a severe impediment to efficiency in agriculture for women cultivators because in the absence of title women cannot get credit or be entitled to irrigation and other inputs, especially technology. Women’s working on land without title has led to creation of a new form of Zamindari (landlordism), as their operation is divorced from ownership.

The recent World Development Report (2012): Gender Equality and Development[iii] emphasizes that closing the gender gaps would lead to enhanced productivity, improved development outcomes for next generation and enhanced representativeness of the institutions.

In addition to improved productivity, the clinching argument in favour of land titles to women is the stability and security it provides, the protection it affords from marital violence,  the bargaining power it gives women in household decision making and in the labour market for wages. However without title to land, women are not recognized, even by the state, as clients for extension services or as candidates for membership in institutions such as co-operative societies.

Women are keen for their independent rights to land. Women’s aspirations and men’s compliance with such aspirations are reflected in a meeting with 50 women and 20 men in a village in Maharashtra “when the land is in my husband’s name, I’m only a worker. When it is in my name, I have some position in society and my children and my husband respect me so my responsibility is much greater to my own land and I take care of my fields like my children” (Kelkar 2011)

[i] Recent state-level studies (Karantaka 2011, West Bengal 2009 and The State of Food and Agriculture 2010-2011) point out 10-12 percent women's ownership of land

[ii] Indian National Sample Survey, 61st Round Schedule 10, 2004-05, Agricultural Census 2005/2006, Department of Agriculture and Cooperation, Government of India

[iii] Gender Equality and Development , World Development Report, 2012 The World Bank

Women land rights and equitable land tenure, as various studies from the worldwide suggested, have significant positive correlation with the reduction in the hunger, nutrition and poverty through increased productivity, more investment on developmental issues like health and education of the children at the household level, and more thrust on the nutritious food cultivation and consumption. Most researchers suggested that the women's secure land ownership would increase her access to other agriculture productive inputs like seed, credit, technology, and information and will increase the women's farm productivity. FAO's study linking women's equitable land tenure, agriculture productivity and reduction in the malnutrition level have been one of the most extensively used research. Besides, several studies conducted in Africa, specifically in Ethiopia, Ghana, suggested that increased secure land ownership of women significantly contribute towards increased agricultural productivity and food security. Most studies that have tried to directly measure the impact of gender inequalities on agricultural efficiency come from Sub-Saharan Africa. These studies find that total efficiency would be improved if resources were allocated more equitably across men and women’s plots (e.g. Udry 1996; Saito 1994). Further, women’s plots have smaller yields than men’s plots, but if differences in agricultural inputs are controlled for the differences disappear. For example, Udry (1996) finds that the average household output of crops would increase by 6 percent in Burkina Faso if fertilizer and other inputs were distributed more evenly across individual household members’ plots. However, there is only very limited evidence from South Asia, specifically India, to support this notion.  In Kerala, Kumar(1978 as cited in Agarwal 2002) found that women’s home gardens were associated with better child nutrition. This, certainly, indicates that homestead in the name of women would able to increase the higher probability of the kitchen gardening at the household and increased consumption of nutritious food. 

Similarly, various anthropological studies conducted in many parts of the world from the sub-Saharan Africa to South America, suggests that there is a higher probability that the income comes from the women would be spent on children's health, education and nutrition while men tend to spend more income on his personal luxury. After the Bodhgaya land movement in India, small agricultural loans were made available to those who had received land. Women used the loans to buy bullocks, while many men wanted to spend it on alcohol (Alaka and Chetna 1987).  A study conducted in Nepal found a strong statistically significant positive correlation between women land ownership and children's education. However, In India number of primary research studies exploring the linkage between the women's equitable land tenure and increased agriculture productivity, reduction in the malnutrition level is required to give a push to the women land ownership policy advocacy. In addition, empirical evidence would also be required, in India, to establish through the women's contribution to the food production sector. According to agriculture census 2010-11, in most of the states, a number of men cultivators and agriculture laborers supersedes the number of women cultivators and agriculture laborers, and the statistics of cultivators and agriculture labourers do not represent the amount of the work done by the men and women in the agriculture sector.

More than 500 women from 22 states attended the regional and national consultations organised by UN Women, MAKAAM and NCW who shared that equitable land tenure is essential for them for increased access to different agriculture inputs, government subsidies, programmes, and training. Some of the benefits of the secure land ownership shared by the women farmers were-

Increased access to agriculture inputs increases their agriculture productivity and reduces their dependence on their spouses. In the context of increased rural migration and feminisation of agriculture, access to productive input on time is non-negotiable for women farmers that effect, substantially, their farm productivity.

Land ownership provides social recognition and increases their decision making capacity not only in the private sphere but also in the public sphere including Panchayats. Increased participation in the public meeting would build their negotiation powers in the government agriculture and land development programme designing and implementation, and in other processes like land acquisition, resettlement, and rehabilitation process. 

In the context of rural distress and increasing farmer suicides, secure land tenure is quite important for a woman as that provide her source of livelihood and income generation after the death of her husband, and also protect her from other social evils like trafficking.

Some of the other observations about women's perception of the gender- equitable land tenure are-

Most married women prefer to claim their right on marital land rather than on the parental land as they contribute significantly for the development of and production from the marital land.

According to many women farmers attended the regional consultations, right over the marital land should be automatically transferred to women at the marriage and the rights should not be depended on the interest and whims of the family, relatives or the religious heads. Women complained of forceful eviction from the marital house after the death of the husband and depended on the in-laws wish to get the land for them and their children. Many Muslim women in the Eastern regional consultation in Bihar shared that they depended on religious leaders' decision to get their rights on the property granted by shariat.

Land tenure security, as suggested by women, should make their consent compulsory during the land selling to increase their decision making and ownership over the land. Further, the required consent process should be legal as many women forced to release their land claim under social and family pressure.

2. What kind of legal and institutional reforms or challenges are expediting or hindering equitable land tenure in India and in its states?

a. Are there examples of good practices or innovations around women’s equitable land tenure rights, which can be replicated across the country?

Legal and institutional reforms have often been criticized for hindering equitable land tenure not because the reforms are irrelevant in themselves, but because the contention between the formal and informal institutions persist despite the changes in law.

The journey to realizing equitable land tenure is often not a straight one. For many countries such as Sweden, it took over 100 years for equitable land tenure to be realized. The push factors for this was the need to increase taxation to facilitate the war, the anchoring of gender equality as a determinant factor for political parties election into office has further consolidated and enhanced gender equality.

Perhaps that is an example from an advanced economy. There are good examples from Africa where equitable land tenure has been realized.

Namibia – Not always individualization but gender equality can be realized within collective/group rights

Approximately half of Namibia’s population and 38% of its territory is held under customary tenure and controlled by Traditional Authorities located mostly in the north of the country. Of the rest, 44% is held as freehold (including large commercial farms and urban land), and 17% is designated national park. Customary land is derived from land regarded as tribal land at the time of independence in 1990.  Within urban areas land is administered by local authorities that function under the control of the Ministry of Regional & Local Government (MRLG), and the Ministry of Housing & Rural Development (MHRD). Responsibilities are listed in the Local Authorities Act 23 of 1992, and its amendments, and the Sectional Titles Act 2 of 2009. Private land is held in freehold title, with all titles registered in the Deeds Registry of the Ministry of Land Reform (MLR). In freehold rural areas (large commercial farms), land titles are likewise registered in the MLR’s Deeds Registry and all rights to land are administered by the MLR in terms of the Agricultural (Commercial) Land Reform Act 6 of 1995.

Historically, communal land rights were under the control of Chiefs and Traditional Authorities (TA) who allocated these rights based on their traditional tenure system and were assigned orally and handed down by memory. Land was not assigned in any standardized or systematic manner resulting in wide variations in practice across the TA. Also there were many disputes owing to lack of clarity on boundaries; land rights over the same area being assigned to different people; not all people were necessarily treated in the same manner; wide variation in size of parcels claimed and the interests of women, dependents and vulnerable groups were not always respected. In some cases fences were allowed, in others not. As a result there developed a lack of trust in the customary system of land tenure. Starting in 1995, the Ministry of Lands and Resettlement (MLR) began drafting the Communal Land Reform Bill in order to regulate the management and administration of communal land. This bill was enacted in August 2002 as the Communal Land Reform Act and became   operational on 1 March 2003 and set out the basis for the registration of communal land rights and leases. Customary land rights allow an applicant to hold the right to a residential unit and a farming unit essentially for domestic/household purposes. The leasehold is issued for a commercial activity (the use right is defined on the certificate). The Act defined who could apply for a communal land right and set out the process by which the right(s) would be assigned. A key provision was to provide for the registration of all existing communal land rights, and also to provide a mechanism for the registration arising from new applications. The responsibility for the establishment of the rights is vested with the 12 Communal Land Boards (CLB), who can approve applications endorsed by the TA. In certain cases (e.g. claims over a certain size) Ministry approval is required. Initially the registration process was slow, and it is estimated that by 2012, only some 20% of existing CLR had been registered and fewer than 500 leases issued.

Projects funded by TgZ, MCC and other donors have sought to accelerate the programme of issuing customary land rights for several reasons

Ensuring people understand and are aware of their land rights and that they claim them

It is seen as an effective way of supporting women’s empowerment and ensuring that women (and others) understand and are able to exercise that right

Reducing land disputes

Reduced conflicts between pastoralist communities and identification and policing of the commons.

Clarification over land use and encouragement of leasing / group rights registration

Ove the period 2012-2016, large scale programmes were initiated that aimed to carry out communal land registration across the 12 TA. By December 2015, More than 67,000 communal land rights were registered, out of an expected total of 250,000. The programme has involved a very extensive outreach and engagement programme at the village community level to ensure that people fully understood and are willing to engage. Teams of para-surveyors and community liaison officers have followed the “focused approach” (see diagram) which has integrated the community outreach, surveying and adjudication, approval and follow up activities.

Although gender inequalities still exist, this program realized high success in ensuring women’s rights to land were captured and registered.

Botswana – Individualization is possible and women can actually acquire rights equal to those of men. T

The results emerging from Botswana reveal that this equality in land holding emerges from the change in mid set towards gender roles in land ownership. Perhaps the answers do not only lie in legal reforms… Perhaps the answer can be found in change of attitude towards gender equality, where the legal reforms are in sync with societal demands and desires and the contestation disappears.

b. What are the specific challenges and bottlenecks for the realization of gender equitable land tenure by 2030?

1. The thriving of informal systems (often unwritten – socially shared rules of conduct (that are created, communicated, and enforced outside of officially sanctioned channels) alongside the formal institutions (the rules and procedures that are created, communicated, and enforced through official channels) is a key bottleneck to the realization of gender equitable tenure. The persistence of informal institutions is not found in only the local communities, it is handed down and deeply ingrained in the minds of judges, land professionals, legislators and implementers at various levels. The need to interrogate this beliefs and truly create a space for gender equality where the legal regime can function with no interference of the subtle informal systems will see this change happen.

What policy and institutional reforms would be required to create an enabling environment?

It is important to interrogate the reason as to why the laws and policies are formulated. These intentions are nuanced but have long term impacts on the outcomes. For example is the intention to create:

Gender-neutral land law or policy? – i.e where the legal or policy approaches use the knowledge of gender differences in a given context to target and meet the practical needs of both women and men and thus not disturb the existing gender relations.

Gender-specific law or policy? Thus where laws or policies use the knowledge of gender differences in a given situation to respond to the practical gender needs of either women or men. These laws and policies do not address the existing division of resources and responsibilities and thus are unlikely to create equitable outcomes in terms of land tenure.

Gender-redistributive law and policy: thus policies and laws aim to transform the existing distribution of resources and responsibilities in order to create a more equal relationship between women and men.

This is critical if change is to happen.

However, more than policy reforms, the solutions could lie in attitude change which can happen through variety of approaches such as reforming how the land administration systems function. Are they gendered in nature and therefore warranting the expectation of a gendered outcome. An example here could be revisiting the land forms and the capture of data, how community education happens, the gender responsiveness of both administrative and juridical disputes.e.t.c

Whether policy level incentives (viz. lesser stamp duty for women) help enhancing women’s land rights?

In the Case of Sweden, the Incentive for the reduction of taxes for house renovations where the properties are jointly owned has seen a continued rise in joint registration of properties by spouses. This has been a positive unintended consequence of an incentive.

In other jurisdictions where randomized control trials have been implemented by the World Bank in Africa, it is difficult to say if there has been a significant change in enhancing women’s land rights.

The answers for the most part lie in awareness of the importance of joint registration and what benefits lie in this.

2. What kind of legal and institutional reforms or challenges are expediting or hindering equitable land tenure in India and in its states?

a. Are there examples of good practices or innovations around women’s equitable land tenure rights, which can be replicated across the country?


b. What are the specific challenges and bottlenecks for the realization of gender equitable land tenure by 2030? What policy and institutional reforms would be required to create an enabling environment? Whether policy level incentives (viz. lesser stamp duty for women) help enhancing women’s land rights?

Although, largest chunk of the Indian land is private land, 86 percent to be precise, and right over the private land comes through inheritance, land market or gift, majority of the most vulnerable section of the community, including Dalits, tribal and female headed households comprise the largest proportion of the landless population. Access to and control over the land, for the landless population, comes through the state government's public distribution of land programme or land leasing.

Many of the state governments, after the 1998 government's order to distribute all public land in joint name, initiated land distribution programmes like "Abhiyan Basera", "Vasundhara" to give land to the landless population in the joint names. (see: bottlenecks and solutions)

State public land distribution schemes are quite advantageous programmatic initiatives for ensuring equitable land tenures for the women of the landless community, however, more effort and innovations are required to strengthen the programmes and increase its' outreach to the rightful claimants. For instance, after implementing Vasundhara for years, Government of Odisha had to initiate other scheme called "Mo Jami, Mo Dhia" (My Agriculture land, My Homestead) to identify the distributed land and ensure that the original claimant receive the distributed land.

Similarly, Government of Bihar had to introduce another initiative to identify the distributed plots on the ground and give the claims to the rightful owners. According to Bihar government, more than 3 lakh landless people have received the land under this programme till now; the state further initiated specific schemes to target Mahadalits, most marginalised group of Bihar.

Good Practices: There are many policy and programmatic initiatives taken by many states to increase women's equitable land tenure rights, some of them can be replicated across the country with minimum changes considering the contextual factors while some initiatives need more assessment to understand its impact, sustainability and replicability.

In the case of implementation of Hindu Succession Amendment Act, single women support centers piloted and promoted by Government of Odisha with support of Landesa can be accepted as an innovative model providing legal assistance and facilitating access to ensure equitable land tenures for single women, one of the most vulnerable section of the community.

Policy level initiatives like lesser stamp duty for women, no registration or mutation charges when husband wants to share his parental land with his wife found to be beneficial for increasing women's secure land rights. In Uttar Pradesh, many women farmers of the Aaroh campaign, during the regional consultations, shared that the less stamp duty argument has been used by many women farmers to register the newly purchased land either in their name or in the name of their daughters/ daughter-in-laws. However, in some cases it was also found that due to the less stamp duty, although, family prefer to purchase the land in the name of the women, they are ill-informed about their land ownership and their rights. Further exploration, using the data from the states where it is being implemented recently like Odisha, Uttar Pradesh, would also be essential to understand that -

What is the land size, after the implementation of the incentive policy, is usually being purchased in the name of women? What is the trend- is there any increase in the land purchase in the name of women?

Who has the higher probability to be influenced by this incentive policy- large landlords or poor small and marginal landholders?

Would the policy initiative work for certain land acreage- for instance, higher the land size, higher the price incentive?

The Kudumbashree programme of the Kerala state government is a beautiful example of the innovation which despite state declaring tenancy illegal not only enabled the landless women community's access to the land ownership but also created convergence to ensure their access to other supports and services to increases their productivity and realise economic empowerment. Convergence between different government departments and active involvement of the Panchayat helped the women farmers to lease out the land for the cultivation purpose. Although, one might argue that leasing would not ensure equitable land tenures and secure land ownership, however, certainly it is essential to ensure poor landless women population's secure access to land whose economic condition wouldn't make it possible for them to purchase the land from the markets.

Bottlenecks and Solutions: Recent consultations held by UN Womem have thrown up some important, interesting facts.

Single women farmers shared their concerns about lack of access to information and lack of understanding on legal processes limiting their access to equitable land rights.

Many are also facing problems in claiming the land they received from the government under various state public land distribution programmes like Bihar's "Abhiyan Basera" or Odisha government's "Vasundhara" programme.

Solutions: The legal aid and handholding support in the land application support provided by the women support center would be beneficial for women, specifically single women to claim their rights over land.

Suggestions: Suggestions proposed by women farmers, during interviews, to improve the public land distribution schemes are-

Instead of joint names, the land should be allocated in single names. If the land is distributed in the joint name, it should be partitionable.

Information on the available public land should be easily accessible to the public to facilitate the claim process.  

Allocated land amount should not be less than 10 decimals. Land allocation under the state public land distribution scheme in Odisha is 10 decimals that not only provide space for house construction, but also leaves enough land for kitchen gardens which could ensure food security and nutrition security of the women and other family members.

Fourth day’s deliberation shifts to 2^nd sets of questions framed around legal and institutional framework around WLR. Three discussants intervened comprising of an international expert, a researcher-activist and a young gender-expert.

Esther Obaikol of Uganda Land Alliance, lead the discussion by highlighting the global scenario with blending examples from Europe and Africa. Legal and institutional reforms have often been criticized for hindering equitable land tenure, she felt, not because of the fact that reforms are irrelevant in themselves, but because the contention between the formal and informal institutions persist despite the changes in law.  Starting with example of Sweden, which took over 100 years to realize equitable land tenure, she goes on to describe the good practices from Africa: Namibia and Botswana. In the Case of Sweden, the incentive for the reduction of taxes for house renovations for jointly owned property lead to continued rise in joint registration by spouses. Namibia relied on an approach to realize gender equality within collective/group rights, avoiding individualization route, adapting to local customary systems prevalent over 1/3^rd of its territory. As part of communal land registration, in a project funded by TgZ, MCC and other donors helped acceleration of issuing customary land rights with one of the focus area on supporting women’s empowerment and ensuring that women (and others) understand and are able to exercise that right. Although gender inequalities still exist, this program realized high success in ensuring women’s rights to land were captured and registered. In Botswana, however, individualization was possible and women could actually acquire rights equal to those of men.  She attributed this to change in mind set towards gender roles in land ownership, concluding that the answers probably do not only lie in legal reforms. She underlined that the thriving of informal systems alongside the formal institutions is a key bottleneck to the realization of gender equitable tenure. On reforms, she felt, it is important to interrogate the reasons as to why the laws and policies are formulated, to ensure long-term impacts.

Seema Kulkarni of SOPPECOM/MAKAAM felt that the overall land policy environment was not in favour of equitable ownership or for access. Existing land acquisition and land use policies do have a lot of negative implications for land for the poor in general. This inevitably means that women’s access in every social group is compromised. Citing the example in Maharashtra on the struggle for regularization of encroached gairan lands where dalits are being dispossessed, she called the groups committed to equitable access to register discontent. In FRA implementation and distribution of state surplus lands, , she felt that recording of WLR has been dismal. In private property domain, implementation of succession laws in favour of women has also been very poor. Interactions with women’s groups in Maharashtra clearly indicate poor implementation of HSAA in favour of women. Better implementation of HSAA calls for very strong state support mechanisms with provision of Gender resource centers at the taluka level to provide legal and other supports. She wanted an amendment to help martial property registered in the name of the wife at marriage.  While reduced stamp duty for registration of property in the name of women is welcome, it would be more effective if it is made applicable to ‘women only’ cases. Importantly there is need for a punitive or a disincentive measure required for release deeds that happen very routinely, where sisters are seen to release their rights over land in favour of their brothers.  Gender disaggregated data are also not available on these provisions including no data on release deeds made by women in favour of men. She also went on to add some positive learning around WLR citing examples of recording of women names in CFR in Maharashtra, registration of tenant homesteads in the name of women only or in joint names, women group leasing in Kudumbashree. In the end, she shared the highlights of recent national consultation on women farmers organized by MAKAAM (www.makaam.in). It calls for the need to go beyond land ownership or access and stress that recognition of women, as farmers should be done irrespective of landholding.

Savvy Somya Mishra from OXFAM says women land ownership, either comes from inheritance laws applicable to private lands (86% of land excl. forests) or through joint titling in the distrbution of Government lands in India. While public land distribution schemes are quite advantageous for ensuring equitable land tenures esp. for the landless community, they need to be strengthened and their outeach to the rightful claimants, must be ensured. After implementing Vasundhara for years, Government of Odisha had to initiate another scheme called "Mo Jami, Mo Diha" to ensure that the original claimant receive the distributed land. Similarly, Government of Bihar had to introduce another initiative to identify the distributed plots on the ground and give the claims to the rightful owners.   Single women support centers piloted and promoted by Government of Odisha with support of Landesa was an innovative model providing legal assistance and facilitating access to ensure equitable land tenures. Policy level initiatives like lesser stamp duty for women, no registration or mutation charges when husband wants to share his parental land with his wife found to be beneficial for increasing women's secure land rights. In Uttar Pradesh, women farmers of the Aaroh campaign, felt that the less stamp duty argument has been used by many women farmers to register the newly purchased land either in their name or in the name of their daughters/ daughter-in-laws. However, in some cases family purchases the land in the name of the women to avail the concession without informing them properly.   She felt there is need of further investigation of these schemes in terms of their impact on parcel size and number of land registraton in the name of women,  type of land owners (big/small) getting influenced  etc.

Good practice : as a consequence of the Odisha state Policy for Girls and Women 2014, there has been reduction in stamp duty - Vide Gazette notification dt 29.11.2016 of Dept of Revenue and DM, 1% reduction in stamp duty on sale and gift deed executed in favour of women in respect of land and house i.e.  4% will be charged instead of 5%.

The impact of this good practice has to be documented for scalability and replicability ( as stated in Q 1)

Some other action points as per the Odisha state Policy for Girls and Women 2014

Extend land lease at nominal rates in favour of women’s groups for productive activities. Allot cultivable/arable Government land on temporary lease basis to women SHGs for agriculture and horticulture purposes.

Allot Ac. 0.04 decimal of homestead land in rural areas to women belonging to low income group and not possessing any house/ flat or homestead land and who are either (i) widowed, unmarried, divorced or separated from husband by a decree or order of a Court or under any custom or usage having the force of law, having attained 45 years of age or more, or (ii) women with more than 40 percent disability, who have attained 30 years of age or more.

To some extent the legal and institutional reforms are supportive and but in the current scenario it is hindering to a greater extent. It is so because I think the tradition of Patriarchy which still persists and results in lack of absolute empowerment of women at ground level. These in reality are the two major challenges and bottlenecks in Gender equitable land tenure in India and its status. We have not been able to break the tradition of Patriarchy, that’s the reason why the social environment or social support system doesn’t really help the woman to break out of the customary Gender roles and perceptions. So, the first thing that needs to be building up is for the society to break the tradition of Patriarchy. The larger society has to be empathetic and feel for each of the individuals. As humans are social animals and women can’t live without the society, or independently beyond the beyond society, their surroundings need to change. That is why I believe the whole social system surrounding women has to transform into something that breaks out of the customary tradition of Patriarchy. There are many customary laws that go against women hindering them to exercise their access to land. Even if there is a legal right, women’s access to land is prohibited and exercising this right is the real problem for them. Even though we have many laws, in the real sense there is a lack of implementation both legally and socially. Women’s easy access to information and legal support is a must and social support is more mandatory to ensure equitable land tenure.

This is in response to Q1 from me and my colleague Sreetama Gupta Bhaya

While Individual property and agricultural rights are very important for women, there is also the need to focus on women’s right for access and control over natural resources especially in the context of the tribal women and women from other traditional forest dwelling communities.

The depletion of commons pose a severe threat to the livelihoods and food security of poor rural women and me. Given that social norms results in women performing specific roles, they are the one responsible for collection of fuel wood, fodder, water etc.

The important question is how to ensure gender equity in decision making regarding conservation and management and benefit sharing of resources. For example, women may collect branches and Minor forest produces, whereas men may have rights to harvest trees, negotiate the price of the Minor forest products to be sold in the market. The choice of species vary for plantation among men and women.

There is a need to recognize the interlinkages of rights to forest and forest resources with the right to livelihoods and subsistence, given the significant role that women play in the survival and maintenance of households from forests and natural resources.

Commons as a resource recognises equal rights of all users by the principle of natural justice. Therefore the spaces for negotiations by the women are much wider that the spaces available in the private property domain.

Collective decision making in collective spaces empowers women much more as she derives strength from the collectives and in the longer run penetrates in the family level decision making

Day-5 of the online discussion was the 2^nd Day of the deliberation on 2^nd set questions on legal and institutional frameworks around Women Land Rights in India. There were seven discussants in Day 2, out of which five discussed Q2 and two responded to Q1 (on contribution of WLR to overall development). Discussants present an interesting diversity, providing varied perspectives to the dialogue. While two of them are Indian Researchers, working in UK, one an international expert, one is a Vice Chancellor of a women university, one if from an INGO and another a freelance researcher.

Dr Chamu Kupusway, an international legal researcher, highlighted the challenges to expediting equitable land tenure in India as poor coordination between departments, the oppressive attitude of monitoring of organiations working in tribal area, lack of data etc. She emphasized that a focussed approach is required for mainstreaming gender into land governance.

Dr Amrita Patel, a gender policy advisor from Odisha, shared the good practices in the state around reduction of stamp duty by 1% on sale and gift deed executed in favour of women in respect of land and house. But, she felt that the impact is not visible so far and there’s a need to generate data around it. State Policy on Women and Girl Child, of which she was one of the archiects, prescribes extension of land lease at nominal rates in favour of women’s groups for productive activities, for agriculture and horticulture purposes and also allotment 0.04 acre of homestead land to rural poor single women.

Sibabrata Choudhury, a land tenure expert, says that India, like most developing countries, have brought in quite a few legislations and directives,  which have increased the chances of women getting land. However, the situation in terms of women’s land ownership and their levels of empowerment has not improved significantly. He attributed the reasons to gaps at supply-demand level: lack of proper orientation of the implementing staff and awareness at the community level. Moreover there is lack of adequate institutional support mechanisms to actualise these changed legislations. In the state of Odisha, Jharkhand and Bihar, his experiences indicate in particular a strong gap in understanding about gender issues and a bias among officials for women owning land. He summarized that the barriers are at three levels (legal, institutional and community) and efforts should be made towards addressing them through innovative approaches.

Prof Padmaja Mishra, Vice Chancellor of a Women University, appreciated the legal and institutional reforms as supportive, but felt that  they have not been able to bring in desired change. It is so because the social system that surrounds women are dominated by patriarchy which obstructs absolute empowerment of women at ground level. We have not been able to break the tradition of Patriarchy, that’s the reason why the social environment or social support system doesn’t really help the woman to break out of the customary gender roles and perceptions.  The larger society has to be empathetic and feel for each of the individuals. There are many customary laws that go against women hindering them to exercise their access to land. Even if there is a legal right, women’s access to land is prohibited and exercising this right is the real problem for them. Most of such laws, suffer lack of implementation legally and socially. Women’s easy access to information and legal support is a must and social support is more mandatory to ensure equitable land tenure.

Sharmistha and Sreetama from Oxfam-India, in response to Q1, underlined the importance of women’s right for access and control over common natural resources especially in the context of the tribal women and women from other traditional forest dwelling communities. They felt that while individual property and agricultural rights are very important for women, such commons’ rights also need to be centre-staged. Depletion of commons pose a severe threat to the livelihoods and food security of poor rural women and men. Social norms results in women performing specific roles, viz. collection of fuel wood, fodder, water etc. largely from commons. They add that focus is needed to recognize the interlinkages of rights to forest and forest resources with the right to livelihoods and subsistence. Commons as a resource recognises equal rights of all users by the principle of natural justice. Therefore the spaces for negotiations by the women are much wider. Collective decision making in collective spaces empowers women much more as she derives strength from the collectives and in the longer run, penetrates in the family level decision making

In response to Q1, Dr Nitya Rao, a gender Expert from University of East Anglia, shared that her experiences from tribal-areas in India. While women don’t have legal titles to land, plots of land, particularly the Dongar or Bari (uplands), are socially recognised as women’s plots. Women control the choice of crops and the output, critical for household nutrition, which  contribute to dietary diversity and also some income from selling small surplus. Some current laws encourage plantation in tribal areas which displaces women farmers from their upland plots, are threatening not just their livelihoods but equally status as farmers. Men are getting convinced regarding returns from the farms and taking decisions for plantation forcing the family to buy their food which is unaffordable leading to mal nutrition. While denying the jointness of both production and reproduction in tribal areas, plantation based interventions are gradually making male control of land, income and indeed women the norm, with negative consequences for nutrition.

Everlyne Nairesiae, GLII Coordinator of UN-Habitat, highlighted the global consensus on securing women’s land rights as key to unlocking social, economic and environmental development potential in any society. Existing literatures shows that in many countries including India, women have weaker land rights, including inheritance rights, compared to men. Inequality in women’s land rights is perpetuated by a number of factors including plural and contradicting tenure regimes (statutory and customary laws). Many years of persistent efforts by various agencies have seen various initiatives raising awareness of the importance of securing women’s land rights, influenced land policies and reforms, provided legal aid and education on women’s land rights, and run campaigns dedicated to influence policies and spur action at various level. Despite these notable achievements, land experts and advocates of women’s land rights have also suffered a setback in the lack of land data disaggregated by sex for monitoring progress and policy influencing on land governance issues at country level.  The inclusion of specific targets and indicators for monitoring women’s land rights in the SDGs is a major opportunity to generate and report progress at national level, making data available for policy decisions by governments and development actors.   An Expert Group Meeting (EGM) held in New York in July 2017, examined ways of securing women’s land rights in the SDGs and its monitoring, focused on SDGs 1 and 5. Experts in the meeting made a number of recommendations around the need of sustainaing multi-stakeholders efforts, importance of globally comparable and nationally applicable methodology to generate sex-disaggregated data, need of country capacity strengthening, and the need to enhance the implementation of the VGGT etc.

The barriers to women's land rights are at all levels: legal, institutional as well as community. My answer here focuses on some of good practices followed by members of Working Group for women and land Ownership (WGWLO), network of 41 CSOs in Gujarat- at all three fronts.  

1. While the HSAA gives opportunity, it is the patriarchal mindset of policy implementers which acts as a barrier to implement the law. In order to create a conducive environment, we, at WGWLO have: 

a. Conducted perspective building of more than 3000 grass roots revenue officers in the Government training institutes; and

- have got this as a topic in the syllabus of the Talati (grassroots revenue officers) trg through government resolution.

Similarly, structured dialogues are also held with Block and district level officials on this issue, which has led to positive impact in changing their perspective on WLR. 

à If we can build perspective of the implementing officers at all levels of revenue department, the legal provisions will be implemented in true spirit. 

2. At the community front, our experience showed three things: 

a. Men and women -both lack awareness about women’s legal land rights;

à In order to overcome this, members of WGWLO regularly run campaigns at village and block level – focusing both on men and women, with several participatory tools designed to address the issue of WLR in a non controversial way. This has seen a positive impact on men and women about women’s land rights. Such campaigns by Government could go a long way.While there have been campaigns for RTE and RTI, there is not enough awareness on HSAA- the logic and the content. This needs to be done by the Govt to create awareness in the community.

b. There are women who struggle initially on their own to own agriculture land, but give up at the end as they do not have anyone who could support and guide them on legal front. 

à In order to address this, we have come up with a model of women Para legal worker, who is trained not just on knowledge regarding revenue matters, but also on social skills to convince the family members of the women. This has really worked well.

While the Legal service Authority does have a course for Para legal workers, the focus on revenue matters is not there again. This needs to have a separate cadre by itself. When women are Para legal workers for the land matters, it has an easy access for other women to share their issue. Govt could think of this at community level.  

c. Despite several initiatives of the govt offering single service window for all schemes to women; or for domestic violence, - there is no institutional mechanism which offers services on revenue matters to women.

WGWLO came up with the idea of Swa Bhoomi Kendra as a logical progression to the model of Para legal workers. The  ‘Swa Bhoomi Kednra’ is where the two trained women para legal workers sit at the block level twice a week, preferably in/close to the premises of the Block revenue official. This has made a huge impact to the visibility of the issue as also in resolving the issues faced by women related to land rights.

 d. As far as policies are concerned, Gujarat has reduced registration fee exclusively for women property owners. Impact study of this has been done by WGWLO for the Mussorie Academy of Administration, where in, to our pleasant surprise, despite women at times being ‘used’ by men,  showed a positive relation between women’s empowerment and property owned through reduced registration fees. Such proactive measures by state will take WLR a long way.

This could also be done in major agriculture schemes, where  a higher incentive for women land owners will motivate them to have women as land owners.

Seema has rightly raised issue of partition of land and stamp duty.

Every policy measure needs to be seen from gender perspective- and seen what implications it will have on women. For example, the I kisan portal requires registration of all land owners to avail major schemes of govt related to agriculture. Now when women do not even know about this, how does one expect them to take action? Similarly, though the land survey process in Gujarat has been laid down wonderfully, in reality, if it is not followed, then women are the worst losers.  Thus, along with coming up with special policies and schemes for women, it is important that gender mainstreaming takes place in all revenue poliices, procedures and schemes.  

Earlier under Hindu Succession Act 1956, women were not getting their full rights on their ancestral property and since the Hindu Succession Act was amended in 2005, and daughters have equal rights, they are entitled to get their full rights as co- parishioners. This means daughter who had limited rights on the property of their ancestors are now coparceners along with the sons and have equal or absolute rights over the property along with the brothers. In section 14 if the woman acquires any property either by way of deed, will, inheritance or by purchase then she’ll be absolute owner in respect of that property. This means the law has provisions for women to inherit ancestral property but the only hindrance is lack of women’s access to the court seeking legal support. The legal provisions can be applied only when women come to court and ask for their rights. The women who come to the court are minuscule. The other important issue is the non-recording of names of women in the Record of Rights therefore; women or daughters remain out of the purview of inheritance. The granddaughters and grandsons have equal right on the property of the grandfather even if the father is alive. But daughter’s names are not recorded due to patriarchal mind set and the fact that she gets a dowry from the family it is considered that her claim is no longer valid and the land is possessed by the brothers. The daughters in turn do not claim their rights, as socially they want to maintain a good relationship with the brothers is another hindrance.

Another hindrance in the process is lack of suo motto recording of women’s names in the government records, the brothers also do not record voluntarily and women are not aware of this process, as a result of this they do not claim their rights. Annually the government revenue officers should conduct a door to door survey and should update their records regarding the women after the death of their father after the HSA amendment of 2005.

In the case of tribal women HSA is not applicable for them. There is no notification until now regarding tribal women inheritance if not then tribal customs are to be applicable. But tribal customs are not codified so far as a result, tribal women do not get inheritance rights in any manner. There are very rare cases of Tribal women getting inheritance rights. The Supreme Court has ruled that in cases where it is found that the families are practicing Hindu cultural norms and if there are evidence that they are sufficiently Hinduaised and if they have adopted the Hindu tradition and culture, for example they have Hindu names over generations, they visit temple etc the Supreme Court has ruled that HSA can be applicable for them. But these are rare instance as people are not aware regarding this matter. For example, there are some progressive administrators who have applied this principle and ensured that tribal women get inheritance rights. In another instance in the Sundergarh district of Odisha there have been major cases of land acquisition in which the compensation was huge so this led the tribal leaders to claim under the Supreme Court Tribunal that they are Hindus and HSA was applied in those cases and no one has objected to that.

In conclusion it is important that more and more women should be made aware regarding their rights and to reach the courts in order for the court to extend them legal support. Government has provisions but it is not being implemented adequately in case of the women – due to societal barriers and institutional barriers in terms on structure and major issues are lack of awareness and patriarchal mind-set. Solutions can come in addressing the conservative gender biased mind set and recording names of daughters in Record of Rights.

Question # 3. What is the present status of women’s land rights in India? How is it reported? What are the available potential administrative and open data sets that is or can be used to monitor women’s land rights in India and in its states?

There is not much clarity on the current status of women’s land rights in India.  The confusion arises due to both conceptual and data related reasons. There is no national level mechanism to systematically collect data on women’s ownership of land. In other words, we do not have sex-disaggregated data on land ownership. We do not know if individuals own land, we only know if households own land.

Since data is collected for the household as the unit, what we do have on land ownership is disaggregation by head of the household – male headed vs. female headed. This categorization is not satisfactory at several levels. Most importatnly, from the SDG indicators perspective, not having individual level data means that we cannot measure and consequently track the progess of women’s land ownership. The female head is held as a proxy for all women! It is quite possible that she does not have ownership rights to the land held by the household, rather is it is held by the adult son or another male member.

The head of household as defined by the Census 2011 is a person who is recognised as such by the household. She or he is generally the person who bears the chief responsibility for managing the affairs of the household and takes decision on behalf of the household. The head need not necessarily be the oldest male member or an earning member, but may be a female or a younger member of either sex. In case of an absentee de jure 'Head' who is not eligible to be enumerated in the household, the person on whom the responsibility of managing the affairs of household rests was to be regarded as the head irrespective whether the person is male or female. It is well known that women are only identified as heads in the absence of an adult male.

There are several data sets available (adminstrative and open) that could be used for monitoring women’s land rights; unfortunately most of them do not have sex-disaggregated information on land ownership. The household is used as the unit of analysis.

1. Individual level

• National Family Health Survey (NFHS) 4, 2015-16, nationally and state reprsentative
  • Question on ownership of agricultural land posed to individual woman (15-46 years of age) in sampled household
  • Data is not available for download. Previous 3 rounds are available for download but do not have this question for women.
• India Human Development Survey (IHDS) 2 (2011-12), nationally representative, but not at the state level
  • Upto 3 household members are identified within the household as owners of agricultural land
  • Data is open
• Agricultural Census, census of all agricultural land holdings
  • Data is on operational holdings[1] rather than ownership holdings, as key decisions on plot and farm management are taken by those who operate the land, who may not necessarily be owners of the land.
    • Unit level data is not accessible, but tabulation requests can be made on the website
  • Household level
• All India Debt and Investment Survey (AIDIS) (2002-03, 2012-13), nationally and state reprsentative
  • Question on land ownership asked at the household level. No individual information.
  • Data is open
• Socio Economic Caste Census (SECC), 2011
  •  Question on land ownership asked at the household level. No individual information.
  • Data is not available for download

There are other state level surveys, Karnataka Household Asset Survey (KHAS) that have individual level land ownership information. However, the data is not yet open and such surveys are by their nature sporadic and infrequent.

It is not clear how India is reporting or proposing to report on its commitments on monitoring women’s land rights. The NITI Aayog website provides information on the Ministry that is responsible for the goals and targets (dated 8th June 2017) (http://niti.gov.in/writereaddata/files/SDGsV20-Mapping080616-DG_0.pdf).

For Goal 1.4, the concerned ministries are Agriculture & Cooperation, Land Resources, Drinking Water & Sanitation, HUPA, RD, Panchayati Raj, Urban Development.

For Goal 5.5a, the ministries are WCD, Land Resource, Urban Development, HUPA.

The common Ministries here are Urban Development and HUPA.

The demarcation of responsibilities and coordination mechanism between ministers are not clear, nor are the data sources identified which will enable the monitoring of women’s land rights.

[1] An operational holding refers to all land which is used wholly or partly for agricultural production and is operated as one technical unit by one person alone or with others without regard to the title, legal form, size or location.

The major issue is lack of data in this context. In the context of FRA, though joint titles are to be recognised, there is however no disaggregated data to show how many single women, women headed households have received rights for cultivation. There is no way to compare the overall/ average area which women headed household receives in comparison to other households.

Even where attempts to find out gender disaggregated data is made, the effort to hold separate discussions with separate category of women is not made and responses are conveniently collected from panchayats mostly dominated by men. This gives biased data.

The debate on women’s land rights has become very critical as participants are sharing what has worked and what further needs to be done. On the 6th day of the online debate, we received 5 entries from participants of varied background.

Mr. Kumar S Shrivastava, a recognized journalist and a sensitive writer indicates about the marginalization of women from the entire land governance  systems, land and livelihoods. Pointing out at the lack of will for implementing land based laws favouring women, he says there are very few states where such laws exist.

On the other hand, agreeing with the previous participant’s point of lack of political will to implement laws favouring women’s land and property rights, Ms. Shilpa Vasavada, an independent development practitioner from Gujarat has showed hope by sharing examples from a state level grass root based network, WGWLO that facilitating WLR and sensitizing revenue officials is possible with consistent efforts. She clearly suggests working at three levels; engaging with the relevant administrative officials, the community and the policy makers. She further shares that persistent efforts in sensitizing revenue officers have brought in very significant changes and WGWLO has been successful in inserting a chapter on WLR in the regular and refreshers’ course of revenue officials in Gujarat. However, she says that merely sensitive officials will not help since the community and the mindset of people carry patriarchy lense; she shared that engaging with community and in that with both women and men both will convince daughters and wives and single women to own and facilitate land rights. In addition to this, she says that it’s imperative to have a support system in terms of women’s collective and a set mechanism where the awareness on WLR is translated into action, sharing the example and experiences of “Swa-Bhoomi Kendra” at block level she says that paralegals who are trained in land & revenue laws and are well aware of inheritance laws are able to facilitate social and legal procedural support to the woman who have come forward to demand her land. She concludes by saying that WLR is very critical and every policy needs to have such gender perspective to support women empowerment.

Mr. M Sunil Kumar, a development practitioner, who studied law has vast experience on working on the issue of land rights in different states. He rightly points out at the two different laws which are vital in facilitating WLR; law governing inheritance and law governing recording of land rights, and in that he reiterates the inheritance law is subject to centre whereas land is a state subject. Sharing example of Uttar Pradesh (UP), one of states of India, which has come up with Revenue Code, which has spells out about inheritance and land recording, which is applicable to all religion. With this encouraging step of UP government, he further says that sensitising officers is very important. In another point, he says that even though there exists laws/rules which defines land ownership either singly or jointly in the name of wife & husband, it’s not followed in letter or spirit. Pointing out at the need for having gender desegregated data he puts forward a need to study status of implementation of such laws. And lastly he makes very important point that even though women are the cultivators, their names are not put in the land record as cultivators, which deprives them of all agricultural benefits.

Mr. Shubendra Mohanty, a retired district judge, has very clearly explained the HSA and HSAA and its relevance. He said that the Hindu Succession Act 1056 gave equal right to women but the amendment in this act in 2005 further made daughters coparceners in the ancestral property of the family along with brothers. However, he says that women’s access to courts is a major problem. He also reiterates what Mr. Sunil Kumar said that woman’s name is not recorded in the record of right and hence, she gets deleted in inheritance, he makes very important point here that, the granddaughters and grandsons have equal right on the property of the grandfather even if the father is alive. But daughter’s names are not recorded due to patriarchal mind set and the fact that she gets a dowry from the family. In the verge of maintaining social relations, daughters do not feel comfortable in demanding her land rights from father. Indicating another hindrance, he says that there is lack of suo motto recording of women’s names in the government records, the brothers also do not record voluntarily and women are not aware of this process, as a result of which sisters do not claim their rights. Talking about practices in tribal community, he says that the tribal customs are not codified and in such cases tribal women's land rights are compromised, sighting an example of land acquisition of Odisha in the Sundergarh district he says that against land acquisition the compensation was huge so this led the tribal leaders to claim under the Supreme Court Tribunal that they are Hindus and HSA was applied in those cases and no one has objected to that. In conclusion he says that solutions can come in addressing the conservative gender biased mindset and recording names of daughters in Record of Rights.

Dr. Vandana Jena, Ex- Secretary of the Department of Land Resources, Ministry of Rural Development, has made very critical comments being there and then in the system. She reiterates the recommendation of the Report of the sub group on Economic Empowerment of Women with focus on Land Rights, Property Rights and Inheritance Laws under Steering Committee on 'Women's Agency and Child Rights' for the Twelfth Five Year Plan, and stresses upon the existing formal institutions to take the initiative to recognize women’s roles and needs in various fields of agricultural activity. Recognizing the identity of women farmers, she says that participation of women farmers in designing programmes for technical training and research must be ensured and women’s access to agricultural technology should be improved through designing women friendly agricultural technology. Emphasizing the recording of rights of women in revenue records, she feels that if this is done, then land rights would be well enjoyed by women. She says that a woman can access land in three ways, through government transfer, market purchase and inheritance, which will empower her economically as well as strengthen her ability to challenge socio-political gender inequality. In retaining the land that women gets, she suggests individual and/or group titles over joint tiles of husband and wife, considering that the poor are best empowered if they function as a group. And in that she points out that the land tenancy laws need to be amended accordingly. Along with this, she says that there should be reliable, fair and accessible mechanisms such as social audits with greater participation of women in the audit bodies for resolving disputes and providing remedies in matters related to tenure and security of lease. Making her point that HSAA has given equal right to women along with men in the ancestral property but the need is also to make such mechanism alike in FRA where the landowner woman retains the land patta for up to 20 years and can not transfer before that. She also feels the need to have a secular law regarding equality based succession of land and property for women and men since the HSAA would be applicable to specific communities. Suggesting few action points for the government, she says that MORD, MWCD, UN Women, Lal Bahadur Shastri National Academy of Administration, Mussoorie to develop awareness building programs, launch campaigns, come up with monitoring indicators and monitor implementation of laws and bringing about awareness on WLRs amongst MPs.

Warmly,

Sejal Dave

Landownership for women matters, for one, it gives some security, not only against abandonment by a husband or to escape violence, but also for old age; to make sure sons will look after her. However, nearly all the women in my study in West-Bengal considered the benefits of land ownership only in these terms of security, not in terms of security for their current livelihood, food security, or decision-making power within the household.

Gender equity in tenure rights is broader than equality in landownership. Women who do own land are not necessarily controlling it as well; male household members are still more likely to be making all land-related decisions. There are too many ideological constraints preventing women from effective farming or effective managing land. For example, it is inappropriate for women to sell the harvest at the market, thus even when a woman cultivates her own land she still needs to rely on a husband/brother/father to make the sale, the latter will then receive the actual money and often keeps it in his control. Women are therefore often not interested in increasing their role in agriculture as the time and energy they put in will not be compensated. Other restraints are that women have trouble buying chemicals as shop owners refuse to sell out of fear the woman will use it to commit suicide, women are not supposed to operate farm equipment, women are underrepresented in irrigation committees. These ideological constraints need to be addressed, otherwise gender equity in tenure rights is simply impossible.

Ownership of cultivatable land for women can have negative repercussions as their responsibility within the household in terms of food security might increase, while that of men might decrease. Furthermore, resentment might grow against women who claim their land rights and their control over land as they are socially expected to give this land to a brother or husband.

Issues with Data

Agricultural Census data is classified by the sex of the head of the household, wherein female headed households (FHH) are largely male-absent ones, while male headed households (MHH) include adult women. While providing some insight into the possible differences between male and female-headed households, this data tells us little about the land access of a majority of rural women, who live in male-headed households.

Secondly, women’s land access has to be seen against the backdrop of increases in the number of marginal holdings and overall growing inequality of land ownership as indicated by agricultural census data (Table 1). This is confirmed by micro-studies. Ramachandran et al (2010:38) reporting from their three study villages in Andhra Pradesh find that landlords and big capitalist farmers, while occupying only, 2, 3 and 1 per cent of households in the respective study villages, owned 25, 22 and 19 per cent of the village lands. At the same time, disaggregating this by gender reveals an increase (by 2.6 per cent) in the proportion of holdings held in the names of women between 1995 and 2011

Table 1.  Number of operational holdings (in percent) by size class and gender of head of household.

Thirdly, there are problems of interpreting the available data. The WGWLO study (2004) demonstrates the various ways in which women might acquire their rights, and the difficulties they might encounter in operationalizing them. In-depth interviews with 403 women who had acquired land in 23 Gujarat villages, revealed that while half (48 per cent) were widows who had claimed a share in their husband’s property, 41 per cent were married and had received titles either with a view to claiming particular state announced tax benefits, or for their husbands to escape land ceiling laws. Many did not know they held land titles. Just less than 5 per cent had inherited a share of their natal property, in the absence of male heirs. They were responsible for the care of their parents. Of the women with land titles, only twenty per cent were cultivating their own land –and took decisions on cropping and sale.

Fourthly, there are significant differences in women’s rights across Indian states, highlighting the importance of paying serious attention to both cultural and kinship variations, and the political economy imperatives across contexts. Yet, they do not necessarily demonstrate an expected pattern. For example, the difference in landholding size between men and women is the lowest in Uttar Pradesh (UP) despite this state being the patriarchal heartland of India (Figure 1). Given that UP has not yet amended its inheritance and tenancy laws, to allow equal inheritance rights to daughters and sons, we might be led (in the absence of supporting data) to suggest that this apparent gender equality in landholding size might simply reflect attempts to overcome land ceiling laws through the division of property held by the landed elite. West Bengal underwent land reforms under the left party led government, yet women do not seem to have benefited, and appear to confront the highest gender gap in land-holding size. The purpose of land reform was to secure tenancy, rather than ownership rights. It was men, who ploughed the land, who were eligible to be tenants, rather than women, engaged in all other operations.

Figure 1.  Average size (in ha) of operational holdings by gender for select States

 (Source: Agricensus 2005-2006).

Finally, the story that emerges from a study of 504 households across 19 villages in Andhra Pradesh and Bihar (UN Women & RDI, 2011) is that the key problem in women’s ownership is one of recognition and legitimacy. Surprisingly, husbands were largely (85%) supportive of wives having legal rights to own land. Women themselves were less supportive: 40 per cent denied this right. On the other hand, despite supportive husbands, 60 per cent of the women felt that they would be unable to farm their inherited land, due to lack of community recognition. In practical terms, the study found that 70 per cent of land in male-headed households was acquired through inheritance whereas this was the case for only 57 per cent of female headed households. In their case, 29 per cent reported buying their homestead plot.

It is good to read such insightful discussion on the subject of women and land rights. Salience of women land rights and ‘rights to tree tenure’ are crucial not only for combating hunger, nutrition, and alleviating poverty. But also, to have better preparedness to the changing climate. Frequency of floods and droughts have increased due to climate variability, and given the income inequality in South Asia, women may bear greater impact of unsecure tenurial rights and access to resources than other groups. Insecure tenure has been associated with deforestation and forest degradation. Women land rights are closely tied to the discussion on sustainable landscapes restoration and governance. Given that landscape restoration can aid in achieving Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) goals Targets 1, 2, 10, 13 and 15 set under SDGs. Any strategy on achievement of landscape restoration need to ensure that actors and networks at the meso level are conscious of structural inequalities while devising any landscape restoration strategy. Gender consideration could result in more effective restoration planning and women and tenure should also be thought of in context of right over trees, as these rights are location specific and may vary depending on existing patriarchal relations.

There is paucity of reliable gender disaggregated data sets on women land ownership. For instance, the agriculture census on land ownership portrays the operational rights and not ground reality. Furthermore, of the women working in the agricultural sector, very small are land owners, and there is a need to capture this. One way to capture this could be create an open source forum where organisations working on the subject would be willing to share these data sets, and a national data base could be created.

Additionally, there should be a push for collecting gender disaggregated data. Furthermore, we know that Individual Forest Rights (IFR) claims under ‘Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Act 2006 (hereafter FRA) are supposed to be joint titles. However, the implementation of FRA has been poor and there isn’t clarity on how many joint titles are recognised. Need to develop a mechanism to track and monitor recognition of claims under FRA.

Reading through the above contributions and discussions, it becomes evident that so much is already happening worldwide with regards to gender mainstreaming in land rights programmes. Yet it also becomes evident that not enough is being done and that we still have a long way to go until women worldwide have equal access to land.

The question I often ask myself lately is why are we not making bigger and faster strides towards achieving tenure security for ALL? There is so much accumulated knowledge in our land rights community describing the importance of secure tenure for women. We have whole trainings seminars and workshops dedicated towards this topic, special websites and books and campaigns. This online discussion is even more evidence about the importance the land governance community places on women’s rights.

I dare to make a controversial statement that often the gap already starts in programme design and how we formulate gender indicators. Going through various documents related to gender and land, I recently came to the conclusion that we tend to fill studies with background information and analyses on the importance of gender, yet when it comes to concrete actions and evidence-based impacts, the pages start to thin out. If you are a planning officer responsible for writing new project proposals and determining indicators, you often want to refer back to concrete lessons learnt to integrate those in the project design. Yet too often, we cannot find the concrete examples, and then refer back to generic gender indicators, e.g. “40% of women partake in trainings”. If using the helpful categorisation of “reach, benefit, empower” by Sophie Theis and Ruth Meinzen-Dick, gender indicators tend to only fall in the “reach” category (highly recommended read: http://www.ifpri.org/blog/reach-benefit-or-empower-clarifying-gender-strategies-development-projects).

So once we have gender properly embedded in project designs, the next hurdle is monitoring of gender indicators. This is also very important for tracking progress of the SDGs, which has been mentioned in previous contributions. This requires gender-consciousness during budgeting and planning from the start. Easier said than done, of course.

My wish for us all is to be more aware of gender during programme design and planning phases, with the aim of generating concrete evidence-based examples of impacts- which can then be used for programme designs in the future, in India and elsewhere. With proper evidence at hand, it is easier to motivate colleagues to address gender in their programmes and it helps to advocate for women’s access to land in political dialogues. I hope and believe that we can move closer towards “empowerment”, if we have more concrete gender examples at hand when planning land rights programme.

Question # 4. How can India address its commitment towards reporting of the SDG related women land rights indicators? How can the country and states progress in reporting and monitoring gender equitable land tenure governance in the context of SDG?

At a basic minimum, India needs to invest in collecting sex-disaggregated data at regular intervals. There are several options. The AIDIS conducted by the National Sample Survey Organisation is one option. It collects a detailed inventory of all assets held by the household. It is quite easy to add a question on which household member owns the asset. In addition to land, it can provide individual incidence for both men and women for assets and yield information on gender gaps as well. The biggest disadvantage with AIDIS is that it is not a multi-topic survey. Thus, the question of land rights cannot be linked to management of land, decision making in other domains or any other outcome of interest. The alternative option is NFHS, which since the last round has incorporated questions on individual level land ownership to both men and women. An advantage of NFHS is that questions on land ownership can be linked to other outcomes; decision making in the household, women’s mobility, health outcomes and so on. However, NFHS is not collected regularly (10 years between NFHS 3 and 4) and has not yet been made public even though data collection was completed more than two years ago. AIDIS is also a decadal survey, but seems less affected by the political climate. The Agricultural Census collects information on operational holdings and this can be modified to include ownership rights as well. But unit level data must be easily accessible to the public for analysis as opposed to the cumbersome tabulation requests that must be made online.

One could look to international initiatives and see what India can learn from their experiences. One such initiative, The Evidence and Data for Gender Equality (EDGE) project attempts to systematically address the data and methodological lacuna in the domain of sex-disaggregated data. EDGE seeks to accelerate the production of internationally comparable sex-disaggregated data on health, education, asset ownership, employment and entrepreneurship through two related activities: (i) creation of an online gender data portal to share existing data on education, health and employment, and (ii) develop methodological guidelines for collecting sex-disaggregated asset ownership and entrepreneurship data. The EDGE initiative has partnered with national statistical agencies in several countries to pilot sex disaggregated data collection. For a start, NITI Aayog could pilot sex disaggregated data collection at state levels before fielding a national survey.

#1. How important is women land rights and equitable land tenure for combating hunger, nutrition and alleviating poverty and for furthering sustainable development in India?

a. What are the evidences in India around contributions of gender-equitable land tenure to development indicators around food security, income, education etc.?

There are lesser evidence of gender equitable land tenure in India as traditionally the lands are inherited by the male members of the family. The land titles to only women or jointly with male counterpart have only happened in case of land transactions where government authorities granted lands to landless (for example settling land under OPLE or OGLS in Odisha or issue of FRA land titles etc.) or in case of private land transactions happened in form of sale and purchase from one party to other party. In the latter case the inclusion of name of the women in land registration is a choice of the purchaser.

Although there has not been any specific outcome or impact correlating hunger or poverty alleviation, however, recent study on distressed migration in the Mohana block of Odisha confers that the incidences of migration is low in case of women holding land title either alone or jointly with male counterparts. The report says only 1.35% of the families migrated where the agriculture land are in the names of women as compared to 75.76% of families migrated where the land titles are in the name of only male. The incidence of migration in case of joint title holders are 8.75%. Using this as a proxy indicator for farm production and income and correlate it with migration, it can be perceived that where women holding land titles have a better farm productivity leading to better income and reduced distressed migration.

b. Is there any evidence of negative impact of gender-inequitable land tenure on agricultural production and food security?

In Indian context land has been seen as a matter of dignity and identity. There are several conflicts over land which are being reported in newspapers and the backdrop of these conflict are inequitable land tenure both in rural and urban context.

Alternatively, there are impacts on agriculture production and food security, which have been increased over the years through a gender equitable land tenure. The impact assessment report 2017 of IFAD supported programme in Odisha for tribal empowerment has mentioned that there is a significant difference in farm production and food security scenario in pre and post land settlement context. The farm production and food security has significantly increased post land settlement in the project villages. This has resulted in increasing investment in natural resources by the families holding land and also increased their participation in governance.

India’s national programme for rural employment i.e. Mahatma Gandhi National Employment Guenette Scheme (MGNREGS) provides unskilled rural employment for 100 days to a family. Apart from the rural employment the programme also aims in creating livelihood assets for poor families to augment better farm productivity and income. The scheme invests about 50% of its resources in developing private land. With a gender-inequitable land tenure, all these large scale investment by national government excludes a larger section of the population. However, a policy measure by the government can increase the gender equitable land tenure by putting a condition that the investment can only be done in private lands if the land is hold by women or jointly.

c. Does gender-equitable tenure matter to Indian women in rural and urban India? What have been their perceptions of tenure security?

The gender equitable tenure provides an identity to women and can reduce the domestic violence over women in both rural and urban context. Access to various entitlements in India are linked with land title and in absence of it many families particularly the women headed or single women families are deprived to access those benefits.

3. What is the present status of women’s land rights in India? How is it reported? What are the available potential administrative and open datasets that is or can be used to monitor women’s land rights in India and in its states?

The status of women’s land rights is not entirely encouraging with almost no state or national mandate to ensure land to women. Unfortunately, the discussion on WLR starts and ends with joint titling of homestead parcels that are mostly state government land distribution programmes. Women don’t inherit ancestral land so easily though both Hindu Succession Act, 2005 and the state procedural laws make substantial provisions for women becoming either coparceners or co-owners. Moreover, since family lands are hardly joint titled, the number and percentage of land under women’s ownership is negligible. None of the state governments, except for states like Odisha that has drafted a State Girls and Women’s Policy in 2014, makes any specific provision for land to women, especially single women. The recently drafted National Women’s Policy does specify land ownership as key to empowerment but it just remains as a wishful thinking as the Land Resources Department, Ministry of Rural Development, is yet to send out any directive to states for provisioning land to women on the plea that land is a state subject and the central government does not have the legislative competence to send out directives to states.

Besides, the State Revenue/Land Resources Department continues to be the last bastion of patriarchy making no concrete efforts to ensure women own land. While there are elaborate provisions for women inheriting family land, the property partition process is so awfully male dominated that the so-called equality created in the partition laws by making the entire partition ‘consensual’ is laughable.  Besides, the Hindu Succession (Amendment) Act, 2005 does not apply to tribals and inheritance is predominantly governed by their customary practices restricting land to women. A tribal woman does not inherit her husband’s land unless she has son. In states like Jharkhand, while the women don’t inherit private agricultural land, government distributed land is also not joint titled.

There is huge dearth of gender segregated data at the state level to monitor women’s land ownership. While the state governments have been asked to generate and store gender disaggregated data, none has made any substantial progress with regard to datasets. However, in the last half a decade with more and more focused work on WLR, governments are motivated to either introduce participatory processes to assess the status of women’s land rights or creatively use the ICDS workers to identify the extent of landlessness within women, though such initiatives are rare, sporadic, small and negligible.  

The focus of the discussion for this phase is suggesting strategies and recommendations wherein India can show its commitments for gender equality in context of SDGs. On the tenth day of the on-line debate on WLR we have received total five responses, two of which are on  developing and monitoring indicators relevant for reporting the country’s commitment on gender equality against the Sustainable Development Goals whereas one is sharing opinions on WLR and other is discussing on various strategies to encourage WLR.

Discussing the first question, Pravanjan Mohapatra says that gender equitable land tenure in India is less evident and joint ownership of woman and man existed only while government distributed land to the families. Indicating through data sets he says that when women own land there are lesser chances of out migration and hence, opportunity to enhance land productivity and income flow in household increases. He adds that in the Indian context, land ownership enhances dignity and identity, mentioning The impact assessment report 2017 of IFAD supported programme in Odisha for tribal empowerment, he says that there is a significant difference in farm production and food security scenario in pre and post land settlement context. The farm production and food security has significantly increased post land settlement in the project villages, which resulted in increasing investment in natural resources by the families holding land and also increased their participation in governance. Sighting example of MGNREGA, he recommends that a policy measure by the government can increase the gender equitable land tenure by putting a condition that the investment can only be done in private lands if the land is hold by women or jointly. Reiterating that the officials are under the great influence of patriarchal norms, there have been hardly any efforts in facilitating WLR. Bringing in the fact of cultural diversity, he points out at the HSAA which agains limits WLR for tribal and other such communities whose customary rights are different.

Suggesting strategies to support WLR, Dimple says that there has to have differentially favouring government resolutions which enhances women’s land rights. She further adds that government programs and schemes should also promote women’s land ownership alike in housing schemes where the house allotted is either singly owned by women and in joint ownership along with her husband. In agreement with the recommendation of Mr. Mohapatra, Dimple says that there should be some reservation for at least 33% of category B works to be on lands in the name of women under MGNREGA.

Sanjoy makes his comments on the question three and points out that the status of women’s land ownership in India is very gloomy and shares examples of various laws and policies where WLR are negligible. He adds that there is a mention of women’s land rights in the recently drafted national policy on women as one of key empowerment indicator but it remains on paper since the DoLR and MoRD have yet not sent any directives facilitating WLRs.

Hema suggests that NSSO conducts All India Debt and Investment Survey - AIDIS at a regular interval and in that it collects detailed inventory on assets held by households, she says, it would be easy to introduce a field/question on household member asset ownership, which will provide individual asset ownership status. However, indicating its limitation, she said that AIDIS is not multi-topic survey and therefore it may not link other relevant questions like land management, decision making etc. which are critical aspects of WLR. Showing another alternate, she says that NFHS has included in its last round question on individual land ownership and can also suggest on other outcome such as women’s mobility and health outcome but it’s periodicity is erratic and says that there is gap of ten years between NFHS 3 & 4. She recommends that in Agriculture census, its imperative to collect information on land ownership and unit level data should have an easy access in the public domain. Suggesting international initiatives on collecting sex disaggregated data on different indicators, like EDGE, she says it suggests how to create an online gender data portal as well as the methodological guidelines to collect this data.

Sibabrata in his comments says that the officials needs to be sensitized on reporting of such sex disaggregated data under various SDGs. Alike others, he says that it’s imperative to indicate gender disaggregated data through different national level surveys conducted in India however its equally important that in doing so the relevant government department converge and come up with micro and macro level data collection, sharing and monitoring system on gender equality.

Warmly

Sejal Dave

Data and statistics could be great tools to establish the status quo of women in any society. Systemic and periodic data collection and analysis by the government or other large agencies would enable establishing cases where women have been strategically neglected in statistics and merely represented as disaggregated data. 

Women are statistical invisible in the National Sample Survey Organisation (NSSO), National Family Health Surveys (NFHS) and other large scale surveys conducted in India.  However, data on women's ownership of assets is a case where acute unavailability of even basic information persists. The Socio Economic Caste Census (SECC), 2011 has a strata on ownership of land by women headed households, but, there is no information on the owner; whether it is singly or jointly owned. 

The current data collection practice by our government agencies, use household as unit of data collection for datasets like land and asset ownership or indebtedness and, disaggregate the data only in terms of sex of the head of household, which is insufficient to analyse the stake/ rights of an individual over these assets. Similarly, the data on housing are collected by the Census of India and NSSO Surveys on other aspects of housing but not ownership over the house. Thus, the data adequacy are lacking in the existing data available to analyse WLR.

Data collection through a mainstream channel is always better and authentic to be accepted by various stakeholders including Governments. Thus there is a need to shift the unit of enumeration from household to individual and integrate gender disaggregation at the metadata level in the data collection tools of NSSO, NFHS and Census.

During 2015, Finscope Survey was hosted by DFID and conducted in four Indian states of Madya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and Odisha for analysing the financial inclusion status of individuals NOT Households for the first time in India. The study was designed and implemented by FinMark Trust (FMT), South Africa as part of the Poorest State Inclusive Growth (PSIG) programme being implemented by SIDBI in India. The study revealed that there has been a significant gap in financial inclusion at the household level and individual level. Thus, it is important to move down to an individual both women and men to enumerate data on various domain whether it is financial inclusion or indebtedness, land ownership, housing etc.  

There are four participants partcipated in the debate on its 10th day: two international from Myanmar and Kenya and two from India, Odish and Gujarat. Their responses varied from importanace of WLR to alienation of communities to issues of data.

Ratanben Makwana a women farmer leader from the Malia region of the little Ran of Kuchchh in Gujarat brings to the discussion her perspective on women’s land rights for vulnerable and de-notified communities. She says that land rights are imperative for women and enhances her respect in the family and society. If woman owns land, her household food security is ensured.  At the field level Ratanben has been promoting awareness among women regarding their land rights, supports them in collecting/making relevant documents, guide and handhold with the revenue and legal processes and ensure that the woman owns land. She has helped them in improving relations with local administration by visiting them frequently to update on issues encountered, seek their guidance on difficult cases. With her assistance a legal committee or Nyay Samiti has been formed which settles different conflicts along with the ones on land and property resulted in developing credibility for the women organisation. While there are successes stories, there are also issues around a de-notified community due to lack of land records. Her institution, a community based organization, has been collected evidences and advocated.

Stephen from Ta And (Paling) which is located in Self-administrative Zone, Northern Shan State of Myanmar, has responded to the question 1 regarding importance of women's land rights and equitable land tenure for combating hunger, nutrition and alleviating poverty, highlights that women do play an important role in our family context. In his opinion, women should have land rights and tenure, because of  three fundamental reasons. First, women have the best knowledge and management skills in cooking, financing and caring the whole family. Second, it is observed that some women work more, take family responsibilities but also get extra income through gardening, planting etc.  Third, most women remain faithful to their husbands.  Furthermore, it is also important to see traditional and cultural practices in a society.  Accepting that he has not too much knowledge about the tradition and culture of India, he underlines that most of the women have not land rights in Mynamar, because land is related with religious doctrine and kingship system.  This is also a big issue for women who are from restricted religious society.  However, in some societies, women have land rights and tenure.  It is thought that if women can access the lands for the agricultural production purpose, the food will secure for the whole family and it will also positively help for educational development in the family.  In addition, when we see from broader sense, political and social adjustment is needed for this issue (women’s land rights and tenure).  As discourse is important in this situation, international agencies and NGOs should join and help local people to demonstrate land rights for the women.  Moreover, negotiation with state is also important for this issue.  

Pravanjan Mohapatra, researcher and development practitioner in India, stresses on the need to address statistical invisibility of women in India. He says that data and statistics could be great tools to establish the status quo of women in any society. Systemic and periodic data collection and analysis by the government or other large agencies would enable establishing cases where women have been strategically neglected in statistics. Women are statistical invisible in the national level surveys like National Sample Survey Organisation (NSSO), National Family Health Surveys (NFHS) and other large scale surveys conducted in India as they have concentrated mostly on women headed householdds.  There is a need to shift the unit of enumeration from household to individual and integrate gender disaggregation at the metadata level in the data collection tools of NSSO, NFHS and Census. He adds that a SIDBI study on financial inclusion revealed that there has been a significant gap in financial inclusion at the household and individual level. Thus, it is important to move down to an individual both women and men to enumerate data on various domain whether it is financial inclusion or indebtedness, land ownership, housing etc.  

Kenya land alliance stresses on the importance of strengthening women’s land rights. They quote an IFAD report, which indicates women’s constitutional rights are frequently jeopardized by conflicting laws or longstanding and retrogressive traditional practices. Most of African traditional set ups, women rarely have full rights to land. They are seen as secondary claimants through male relatives. As further emphasized by Kenya Land Alliance, despite women’s role in the agricultural sector which contributes significantly to the economy, traditional practices have limited their decision-making power and control over land. Strong evidence suggests women’s access to and control over land as an important tool for raising women’s status and influence within households and communities. Economically and socially empowered rural women have a high likelihood of directly impacting farm productivity and improving overall household welfare. A linear focus on tenure rights for Women’s land rights, for example, is the magic bullet that will help address social inequity and poverty.

4. How can India address its commitment towards reporting of the SDG related women land rights indicators? How can the country and states progress in reporting and monitoring gender equitable land tenure governance in the context of SDG?

a. Are the existing datasets adequate? What kind of data is more appropriate and how it can be collected?
b. What shall be the institutional mechanism for such monitoring? Who should all be involved? What will be the levels and frequencies of such monitoring? Will it be adequate to just report as per SDG or link the information to decision making? What could be the mechanism?
c. What are the good practices? What kind of policy learning do they provide?

Three out of the seventeen SDGs- SDG 1[i], SDG 2[ii] and SDG 5[iii], ratified by Indian Government, have dedicated indicators linked to the women land rights. Although the target 2.3[iv] of SDG 2 acknowledges achievement of the equal land rights of women significant for achieving doubling the agriculture productivity, it is the against target 1.4[v] and 5.a[vi] of SDG 1 and ess of various progressive legislations granting equal land ownership to women like Hindu Success55 SDG 5 that requires India to collect gender-disaggregated land ownership data to report back achievement of Sustainable Development Goal(SDG). Indicators under target 1.4 and 5a that demand collection of gender-disaggregated data are:

1.4.2 Proportion of total adult population with secure tenure rights to land, with legally recognized documentation and who perceive their rights to land as secure, by sex and by type of tenure;

5.a.1 (a) Proportion of total agricultural population with ownership or secure rights over agricultural land, by sex; and (b) share of women among owners or rights-bearers of agricultural land, by type of tenure;

5.a.2 Proportion of countries where the legal framework (including customary law) guarantees women’s equal rights to land ownership and/or control.

Despite its significance, the lack of any nationally representative gender-disaggregated data on women land ownership shows the lack of policy maker's attention to this crucial piece of information which could help to monitor and track the achievement of various progressive legislations granting equal land ownership to women, for Example-Hindu Succession Amendment Act 2005.

The Planning Commission[vii] recognised that the land ownership is an instrument for reducing political and social gender inequities, and gender disaggregated data availability through data digitisation would able to ensure achievement of the goal. Hence, it proposed to all the state governments to maintain gender disaggregated land data, separately from the joint land title, on enabling the Ministry of Women and Child Development (MWCD) to monitor the progress of the implementation of Hindu Succession Amendment Act 2005. In August 2014, a directive was sent out by the then Secretary, Department of Land Resources, Ministry of Rural Development, Government of India, to the Chief Secretaries of all States and Union Territories, for capturing the gender-disaggregated land ownership data.

Digitization of the land records, initiated by the Union Government for effective and efficient management and maintenance of the land records, could have been a greater tool for providing gender-disaggregated data on women's land ownership and promoting women's land literacy. However, despite dedicating special code to capture gender-disaggregated data, code 14, following the state land records manual; however, initial technical report of the DILRMP programme by the Department of Land Resource (DoLR) found that none of the states captured gender-disaggregated data and even the state like Manipur did not form the code for capturing gender[viii]. The software used in the land digitisation programme can be updated/flexible enough to capture the nuanced land ownership data including women land ownership. In the Western regional consultation[ix] in Pune, Ms. Leena Mehendale, Ex-settlement commissioner said that the software used for the land record digitisation is not open-ended software that restricts the incorporation of the new parameters and limits the data mining.

Hence, the suggestions for effective data collection, setting up proper mechanisms in place for monitoring the land data to inform the policy making for gender equality and equity are-

Data Collection Mechanism- The software of land digitisation programme should capture nuanced details of the land operation system. Department of Land Resources, Ministry of Rural Development should collect gender-disaggregated land data for private land, public land distribution, leased land and forest land separately. Secure land rights give absolute rights to women that empower the women to take control of her life which operational land ownership like leased land, non-partitionable joint land ownership can achieve, hence important to capture the differential land ownership separately.

Monitoring Mechanism- The DoLR should set clear timelines and monitoring mechanisms to follow up the land data collection method. A committee should be formed taking representatives from the departments of rural development, land resource department, agriculture, and women and child development department to track the gender disaggregated land data collection, tracking the progress of implementation of different land laws ensuring women secure land ownership and enhancing departmental budget allocation for increasing women farmers' access to agriculture services and schemes. While the department of land resources will be accountable for the collection and updating of the gender disaggregated data, periodic review of the data will be helpful for the women and child development department to access the progress of the land laws like Hindu Succession Amendment Act 2005. The agriculture department would use the data for accessing the outreach of the different government inputs, credits, services and schemes to women farmers.

Capacity Building and Creating Infrastructure at the Grassroots for proper data collection, validation and data monitoring- Firstly, government officials engaged in data collection to data entry and mining should be trained on gender sensitisation, social and cultural norms restricting women land ownership etc. for understanding the systematic, social and cultural barriers limiting land ownership and reporting. Underprivileged community, specifically women, should be trained on how to read and understand the collected land data so that instead of becoming a mechanical process it will able to empower women to understand their rights and entitlements. In the regional consultations, women farmers demanded the gender support centers which would help women farmers to claim their land rights, support the Department of Land Resource in collecting and validating the land data and empower the women through digital literacy.  

Some challenges to prepare MIS on gender-disaggregated data expressed by revenue officers at the district levels were-

How and what proportion of the joint land should be documented in the name of the spouses? The state government programmes on joint land titles distribution do not have any instruction and the land is non-partitionable.

As most of the joint lands distributed under different state government programmes are non-partitionable, dividing the land on the paper will not be helpful for the women. A land claim process for joint land should be prescribed to help land division in case of divorce, separation.

1. How important are women land rights and equitable land tenure for combating hunger, nutrition and alleviating poverty and for furthering sustainable development in India?

a. What are the evidence in India around contributions of gender-equitable land tenure to development indicators around food security, income, education etc.?
b. Is there any evidence of negative impact of gender-inequitable land tenure on agricultural production and food security?
c. Does gender-equitable tenure matter to Indian women in rural and urban India? What have been their perceptions of tenure security?

a. Women land rights and equitable land tenure, as various studies from the worldwide suggested, have significant positive correlation with the reduction in the hunger, nutrition and poverty through increased productivity, more investment on developmental issues like health and education of the children at the household level, and more thrust on the nutritious food cultivation and consumption. Most researchers suggested that the women's secure land ownership would increase her access to other agriculture productive inputs like seed, credit, technology, and information and will increase the women's farm productivity. FAO's study linking women's equitable land tenure, agriculture productivity and reduction in the malnutrition level have been one of the most extensively used research. Besides, several studies conducted in Africa, specifically in Ethiopia, Ghana, suggested that increased secure land ownership of women significantly contribute towards increased agricultural productivity and food security. Most studies that have tried to directly measure the impact of gender inequalities on agricultural efficiency come from Sub-Saharan Africa. These studies find that total efficiency would be improved if resources were allocated more equitably across men and women’s plots (e.g. Udry 1996; Saito 1994). Further, women’s plots have smaller yields than men’s plots, but if differences in agricultural inputs are controlled for the differences disappear. For example, Udry (1996) finds that the average household output of crops would increase by 6 percent in Burkina Faso if fertilizer and other inputs were distributed more evenly across individual household members’ plots. However, there is only very limited evidence from South Asia, specifically India, to support this notion.  In Kerala, Kumar(1978 as cited in Agarwal 2002) found that women’s home gardens were associated with better child nutrition. This, certainly, indicates that homestead in the name of women would able to increase the higher probability of the kitchen gardening at the household and increased consumption of nutritious food. 

Similarly, various anthropological studies conducted in many parts of the world from the sub-Saharan Africa to South America, suggests that there is a higher probability that the income comes from the women would be spent on children's health, education and nutrition while men tend to spend more income on his personal luxury. After the Bodhgaya land movement in India, small agricultural loans were made available to those who had received land. Women used the loans to buy bullocks, while many men wanted to spend it on alcohol (Alaka and Chetna 1987).  A study conducted in Nepal found a strong statistically significant positive correlation between women land ownership and children's education. However, In India number of primary research studies exploring the linkage between the women's equitable land tenure and increased agriculture productivity, reduction in the malnutrition level is required to give a push to the women land ownership policy advocacy. In addition, empirical evidence would also be required, in India, to establish through the women's contribution to the food production sector. According to agriculture census 2010-11, in most of the states, a number of men cultivators and agriculture laborers supersedes the number of women cultivators and agriculture laborers, and the statistics of cultivators and agriculture labourers do not represent the amount of the work done by the men and women in the agriculture sector.

More than 500 women from 22 states attended the regional and national consultations organised by UN Women, MAKAAM and NCW who shared that equitable land tenure is essential for them for increased access to different agriculture inputs, government subsidies, programmes, and training. Some of the benefits of the secure land ownership shared by the women farmers were-

Increased access to agriculture inputs increases their agriculture productivity and reduces their dependence on their spouses. In the context of increased rural migration and feminisation of agriculture, access to productive input on time is non-negotiable for women farmers that effect, substantially, their farm productivity.

Land ownership provides social recognition and increases their decision making capacity not only in the private sphere but also in the public sphere including Panchayats. Increased participation in the public meeting would build their negotiation powers in the government agriculture and land development programme designing and implementation, and in other processes like land acquisition, resettlement, and rehabilitation process. 

In the context of rural distress and increasing farmer suicides, secure land tenure is quite important for a woman as that provide her source of livelihood and income generation after the death of her husband, and also protect her from other social evils like trafficking.

Some of the other observations about women's perception of the gender- equitable land tenure are-

Most married women prefer to claim their right on marital land rather than on the parental land as they contribute significantly for the development of and production from the marital land.

According to many women farmers attended the regional consultations, right over the marital land should be automatically transferred to women at the marriage and the rights should not be depended on the interest and whims of the family, relatives or the religious heads. Women complained of forceful eviction from the marital house after the death of the husband and depended on the in-laws wish to get the land for them and their children. Many Muslim women in the Eastern regional consultation in Bihar shared that they depended on religious leaders' decision to get their rights on the property granted by shariat.

Land tenure security, as suggested by women, should make their consent compulsory during the land selling to increase their decision making and ownership over the land. Further, the required consent process should be legal as many women forced to release their land claim under social and family pressure.

[i] SDG 1: End poverty in all its forms everywhere

[ii] SDG 2: End hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition and promote sustainable agriculture

[iii] SDG 5: Achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls

[iv] 2.3 By 2030, double the agricultural productivity and incomes of small-scale food producers, in particular women, indigenous peoples, family farmers, pastoralists and fishers, including through secure and equal access to land, other productive resources and inputs, knowledge, financial services, markets and opportunities for value addition and non-farm employment

[v] 1.4 by 2030 ensure that all men and women, particularly the poor and the vulnerable, have equal rights to economic resources, as well as access to basic services, ownership, and control over land and other forms of property, inheritance, natural resources, appropriate new technology, and financial services including microfinance

[vi] 5.a undertake reforms to give women equal rights to economic resources, as well as access to ownership and control over land and other forms of property, financial services, inheritance, and natural resources in accordance with national laws

[vii] http://planningcommission.gov.in/index_oldpc.php

[viii] http://dolr.nic.in/lrc_codes_list_finaldraft300908reviseda.pdf

[ix] MAKAAM (Mahila Kisan Adhikar Manch), UN Women, and NCW (National Commission for Women), collectively, organised five regional and one national consultation to build capacities of the key stakeholders on women farmers rights and entitlements and bring out the voice, needs and concerns of the women farmers from the ground to prepare a comprehensive framework addressing gender gaps in laws, institutions, policies, and programmes in the agricultural and rural developmental sector. 

Question 1:

It seems hardly a question of debate whether women having equitable rights and ownership over land contributes positively to the overall wellbeing and development of communities. As all participants here have stated and as globally influential individuals and organizations have repeatedly emphasized, women having control and ownership of land and other productive resources is good for their status in the household and community, for their economic independence, and for overall food and nutritional security of their family. As was argued by Ulka Mahajan of Sarvahara Jan Andolan at a recent MAKAAM western regional consultation on women farmers held in Pune in May 2017, women tend to view land as a support system for their families that needs to be sustained and nurtured for the long-term, as opposed to viewing it solely as a commodity that can be sold for short-term monetary gains.

Question 2:

While my knowledge in this field is raw, from my academic and the little professional experience I’ve had, I’ve learned that two challenges stand out in realizing equitable land tenure for women. One: While many laws have surfaced over the years for WLR as participants in this discussion have noted, lack of awareness and understanding at the community level of these laws and of the procedures to go about in securing land rights for women is a huge barrier. Many incredible civil society organizations are making great efforts at raising awareness and are educating and training locals - especially local women - in learning about legal provisions and the procedures for obtaining land rights. The Swabhoomi-Kendra paralegals and Ratanben Makwana of Malia Mahila Shakti Sangathan, both mentioned above, are such examples of women that have been trained in legal matters related to land rights and are thus empowered to educate and guide other women in securing their land rights. While interning with Gujarat-based ANANDI recently, I met Adivasi woman farmer Resham Nayak from a village in Panchmahaal of eastern Gujarat. She was one of 6 daughters of her parents (who have no sons), and having heard stories of women being stripped of their land by relatives or in-laws after the deaths of their parents or husbands, Resham and her parents used to worry about the fate of Resham and her sisters in the absence of their parents. But when Resham and her mother attended a meeting held by a local women’s sangathan, they became aware about their legal right to have their family land in the name of the sisters and Resham’s mother. With the support of her father in whose name the family land was, Resham was able to get joint ownership rights for herself, her sisters and her mother. It’s in this way that awareness of laws and the empowerment to engage with authority spreads. These are good practices by civil society organizations. However, it should also be the responsibility of administrative officials to proactively campaign to create awareness of laws and make them accessible to women.

The second and most profound challenge to WLR, as stressed by most participants here, is the entrenched patriarchal mindset and traditions at the level of the community and often at the level of implementing officials. Gender sensitization seamlessly woven throughout the training and education of administrative officials is crucial to make administrators more willing, empathetic and proactive. One strategy—while it may seem simplistic—may be to use the tool of storytelling to share stories like that of Resham through community-level platforms to highlight the practical benefits of WLR in a way that convinces the unconvinced.  Can influential local men who are supportive of gender equitable practices be recruited as allies by local government or civil society organizations to advocate in their communities for issues like WLR? The most important point of intervention, however, may be enhanced gender sensitive education (whether formal or informal) starting at the level of primary schools so next generations of girls and boys can more easily adapt a gender equitable worldview. Changing mindsets always takes time, but the flow of dialogue and conversation around the topic must be constant.

In the Sustainable Development Goals women’s land rights have got a prominent mention which is a significant gain. But the government even within its laws, policies and programmes been conservative towards women’s participation in the true sense, whatever voices have been incorporated is not adequate. It is obvious as we have struggled not only in gathering information / data on status of women’s land ownership, we do not have adequate evidences to claim that women’s land rights have resulted in particular outcome covering the an indicator. Inadequate data is due to simple lack of intent to create such records.  India can only address the commitment to SDGs by developing specific indicators for capturing gender segregated data, both quantitative (through large surveys) and qualitative data (through documentation of stories of women who have received land and property). Qualitative data can be gathers by Women and Child Development Department partnership with Revenue department, but specific budget needs to be allocated by the government for ensuring the India and its states have Gender desegregated data.

If we refer to the Gendering Human Development Report by Ministry of Women and Child Development Department, it concludes that overall the low scores attained nation-wide on the ‘Power over Economic Resources’ dimension draw attention to the severe gender disparities that exist with regard to access to resources and assets and the historical discrimination faced by women in access to land, livestock, credit and other productive resources, despite their unpaid and unrecognised contribution to agriculture and farm and non-farm family based economic activities. This requires special attention as access to resources can enhance opportunities and lead to enhancement of capabilities, thereby leading to higher levels of gender empowerment as well as development. Human and gender development indices can be used as tools to re-allocate resources for programmes and schemes designed to correct gender gaps at all levels of governance through monitoring and tracking progress regularly and ensuring implementation; provide access to assets and income earning opportunities for women such as providing right to work to all citizens; provide access to work at decent wages to enable exit from poverty and thereby reduce gender disparities in work and standard of living and so on. It is time and government has committed threfore, 'special' attention is required for women’s rights .

That women's rights to land must be recognised and upheld has been established by now. We need laws to be implemented in full, so women can inherit property, cultivate lands as owners and derive all the benefits that ownership brings.

    As others have pointed out, land rights leads to greater empowerment, economic independence, better food security and improved living standards for the entire family.

    A lesser known and discussed effect is on domestic violence. Studies elsewhere have established a clear link between land rights and domestic violence, with women vulnerable to and experiencing more abuse when claiming their share of a property.

    India recorded 327,394 reports of violence against women, including cruelty by husbands, in 2015, up more than 40 percent from 2011, according to data from the National Crime Records Bureau.

    While there are no separate data on how many of these cases are related to property, it is a safe bet to say it must be a significant number.

    Fearing violence, women often do not assert their claim to property. But this only makes more vulnerable, as they then live in constant fear of being thrown out by their brothers, husband or in-laws.

    This must end. The fear of custom, the patriarchy and of upsetting family ties deprives women of their legal rights over land and property, which give them greater stability, confidence and respect in addition to the obvious economic benefits.

    Land rights are essential to ending domestic violence, which is key achieving goal five on gender equality and empowerment for women and girls.

Introduction:

Although there is a lack of systematic collection of country-wide gender-segregated data on land ownership in India, it is apparent that women’s lack of access to land and property presents a serious problem. This is a problem women face not only in this country but globally.

Research shows that “just 1 per cent of the world’s women actually own land” (Realizing Women’s Rights to Land and Other Productive Resources)

A 1991 sample survey of rural widows by Martha Chen, covering seven States in India, found that of the 470 women with landowning fathers, only 13 percent inherited land as daughters. Thus, 87 percent of the surveyed women did not receive their legal due as daughters. There was, however, wide regional variation ranging from 18 percent inheritance by daughters in southern India to only 8 percent in northern India. (Agarwal, Bina. 2002)

Women’s access to land and property offers the solution to many of the SDGs such as ending poverty, ending hunger, achieving gender equality, promoting sustained, inclusive and sustainable economic growth, and full and productive employment and decent work for all. Yet, universally, women seem to make very slow headway in achieving access to land and property.

Most studies on the subject end up by giving suggestions to the government for removal of obstructions in achieving this important objective. There is a need to examine whether the government is indeed the ideal agency to bring about the required reforms. 

How do women attain rights in land and property?

Three major ways by which women can gain access to land/property are identified as inheritance, transfers made by the state, and the market.

“Of these, inheritance is the most important, since in most countries arable land is largely privatized. In India, 86 percent of arable land is privately held” (Agarwal, Bina.2002) 

India primarily follows the traditional patrilineal pattern with matrilineal pockets existing only in a few places, such as northern and central Kerala in the south and Meghalaya in the northeast. (Ibid)

“In India, women’s access and rights of ownership over family property (both moveable and immoveable), in the absence of a will, is governed by succession laws based on religion.” (Indian Women's Rights to Property)

Prior to 1937, under the Hindu law, women did not have the right to own any property at all. The Hindu Succession Act, 1956, (HSA) allowed women to have a share equal to the children in the husband’s property. (Ibid)

The “Muslim Personal Law Shariat (Application) Act of 1937 substantially enhanced Muslim women’s property rights compared with those prevailing under custom.” (Agarwal, Bina.2002) 

An amendment to the HSA in 2005 made “daughters coparceners at par with sons, such that they receive an equal birthright to a share in the natal family’s ancestral property, i.e., parents’ property.” (Indian Women's Rights to Property)

However, ‘land’ being a state subject, the HSA left agricultural land outside its purview. “Hindu women’s inheritance in tenancy land thus depends on state-level tenurial laws, which in most northwestern states specify an order of devolution that strongly favors male agnatic heirs. Women come very low in the order of heirs, as was the case under age-old customs.” (Agarwal, Bina.2002)

Likewise, the Shariat Act of 1937 also excluded all agricultural land from its purview.

Since land reforms fall under the Ninth Schedule of the Constitution these inequities cannot be challenged on constitutional grounds. Thus, agricultural land, unlike other property, “continues to devolve according to customs, tenurial laws, or other preexisting laws.” (Ibid)

 “In both Hindu and Muslim legal systems the regional contrast is also striking. Gender inequality increases as we move from south India northward. Among Hindus, for instance, northwest India is the most gender unequal in relation to women’s claims in both agricultural land and joint family property, while the southern states provide relative legal equality on both counts. Central India falls in-between. The map of women’s legal rights under Muslim law looks rather similar, with a distinct contrast between northwest India and the rest of the country.” (Agarwal, Bina.2002) 

State transfers of land have not made any significant dent in customary practices as the state is hesitant to grant rights in the transferred lands solely to women, preferring instead to give joint titles to husbands and wives. Women are granted titles only in the absence of eligible male members in the family.

 In so far as purchase of land is concerned the rural land market is not yet well developed making it difficult even for men to easily find procurable land. In the early 1970s a study found that only 1.75 percent of landowning families sold land. Another study in the State of Uttar Pradesh found that over a thirty-year period, extending from the 1950s to the 1980s, only 4.1 percent of agricultural land was sold by owners. (Agarwal, Bina.2002)

Another important factor is that women seldom have the resources to purchase land since economic resources in the family are usually controlled by men.

The Government as a Reformer:

The role of the Government as a reformer can be best assessed by examining how it deals with the barriers preventing women from gaining access to land and property.

A major barrier has been identified as inadequate laws of inheritance. The foremost duty of the Central and State governments would apparently be to reform the situation by bringing before Parliament and State Legislatures, respectively, the necessary enabling legislations.

In India it is generally perceived that government is motivated to bring about reforms when any one or more of three conditions exist- there is international pressure to reform; political support is likely to expand by bringing in the reform; or there is likelihood of filling state coffers due to the reform. In the case of granting women access to land there is virtually no prospect of enhancing state coffers and, hence, the government is likely to be motivated to initiate reforms only if the first two factors are present.

The Central government is more exposed to, and, hence, more likely to initiate reform due to international pressure than are the State governments. Since it is the Central government that makes commitments to various international covenants and Treaties the onus of commitment to certain causes falls on its shoulders and in its bid to project the country as a progressive, democratic state it sometimes initiates reforms that do not emanate from local demands but are imposed on State governments for implementation.

In the case of granting women land rights one would not be too off the mark to say that there has been a great international push for reforms. Several international conventions and bodies have emphasized the need to ensure gender equality as a human right in all spheres including granting of land rights.

Examples of these human rights instruments include The Universal Declaration of Human Rights; The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights; International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights; The Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women; The Convention on the Rights of the Child. (Realizing Women’s Rights to Land and Other Productive Resources.)

Several international policy instruments, principles, guidelines, recommendations and developmental goals have been laid down which participant countries are expected to follow such as the Platform for Action formulated in  the Fourth World Conference on Women; The Habitat Agenda, adopted at the second United Nations Conference on Human Settlements; The International Conference on Population and Development (Cairo, 1994); United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development and The Plan of Action of the World Food Summit. The General Assembly and other intergovernmental bodies urge States to accord women full and equal rights to land and other property. States adopted the Voluntary Guidelines on the Responsible Governance of Tenure of Lands, Fisheries and Forests in the Context of National Food Security, under the auspices of the FAO Committee on World

Food Security, in May 2012. (Realizing Women’s Rights to Land and Other Productive Resources.)

The SDGs, too, act as an international push for reforms.

The Central government is more open to change than State governments also because it is cushioned to some extent from the pressure of traditionalists resisting change, whereas State governments, being ‘nearer to the earth’ cannot afford to ignore them. This is clearly visible from the fact that the HSA has been amended faster than tenancy laws falling under the purview of the State Legislatures. State Governments often hesitate to take the initiative in changing customary laws for fear of backlash at the hustings.

Another barrier to women accessing land is the gap between the law and its implementation. The lack of grievance redressal mechanism within the law makes its enforcement weak. For example, there is no effective grievance redressal system for daughters or widows denied their legitimate rights in land. The remedy available is to move a civil suit which is not only cumbersome and expensive but impractical for most women. Where governments are serious about implementing the law the enforcement mechanism is usually in-built in the law such as a Tribunal (for example The Bihar Land Tribunal Act, 2009), an Authority (for example, Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement Authority under the Right to Fair Compensation and Transparency in Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement Act, 2013),.or a Commission (for example the Central/State Information Commissions under the Right to Information Act, 2005). If women’s access to land and property are to become a reality some enforcement mechanism has to be built into the law for speedy remedy for non-compliance.

The practice of denying women access to land has a cause-and-effect relationship with a socio-cultural-economic milieu which ensures that it is difficult to reverse the process.  This milieu includes denying women education and control over economic resources, imposing ritual taboos against women ploughing, imposing social restrictions on women’s mobility and enforcing ‘purdah’ or system of seclusion which restricts public interaction and eventually leads to lack of awareness about laws and rights. Imposing the social taboo on parents from seeking help from married daughters, particularly in northwest India, results in the perception that empowering a daughter with property does not bring with it any reciprocal benefit and is, in fact, lost to the natal family. The values imbued in daughters, including by their mothers, include idolization of docility and self-sacrifice, including fore-going property rights in favour of brothers. Girls are taught to look upon brothers as potential saviours after the passing away of the parents in case of unbearable conditions in the husband’s home or in case of desertion or marital breakup. Although this succour eventually proves to be a mirage many women prefer to forgo their rights in their ancestral property to keep doors to their brothers’ home open rather than antagonizing them by claiming a share in the property.

The government appears ill-equipped to deal with this socio-cultural-economic milieu. While it can easily ensure passage of legislation, such as Right to Education and the anti-dowry laws, and use media to project rights already bequeathed and thus improve legal literacy and awareness among women, it is difficult to visualize the government as a reformer of these social practices. Even penal clauses in a law will not work where women voluntarily forego their rights. The role of enlightened civil society in reversing public opinion is likely to be far more effectual. Moreover, seldom have rights been handed over on a platter to the deprived; the latter have to be organized into a group that makes a vigorous demand for their rights and digs in its heels to fight for them. The beneficiaries eventually need to present themselves as a group that can influence political outcomes.

The question is do women present themselves as such a group?

According to Wikipedia, “within patrilineal communities, there is a strong resistance by men towards endowing women, especially daughters, with rights to land access.” (Women's property rights)

This assumption appears to make women’s land rights a ‘men- versus- women’ issue. If such was the case then women would form a strong vote bank and it would be worth the while for State governments to woo them by introducing the required reforms. However, experience shows that women do not form a block of opinion on the issue. In fact, women seem to have an ambivalent attitude towards land and property ownership. As daughters, young women champion the cause of women inheriting property from their parental homes to gain financial security and status. By the time women are ready to marry off their children their attitude to property changes; they become reluctant to empower daughters with property on the grounds that since they are likely to leave the household after marriage they will ‘take away’ the property to their marital homes. Since women are more likely to stay with their sons in old age they support husbands in willing property only to their sons. Moreover, as mothers-in-law, women may not favour empowering their daughters-in-law by making them co-owners of property. Thus, it is apparent that women enbloc may not support reforms in women’s access to land. In fact, lack of such an alliance among women may be holding back the reform process.

An important facet of the socio-cultural-economic milieu is the male-oriented decision-making process within the family. Even if the government  were to help women to access land by bringing in the necessary legislation, by providing mechanisms to ensure the effective implementation of the laws, by transferring state-owned land only in the name of women, by providing subsidized credit to women to enable them to enter the land market and by providing lower rates of Stamp Duty in the case of land registered in the name of women, which many States have already provide for, it is difficult for the government to ensure that women retain bona fide control over the land they get. It has been found that even where women do manage to get land in their names their control over it remains notional.

“The decision making power on use of the land remains firmly in the grip of men – father, brother, husband or father-in-law.” (Indian Women's Rights to Property)

The same phenomenon has been observed in the case of widows inheriting land of their deceased spouses where “—invariably the widow’s name is entered jointly with adult sons, who effectively control the land.” (Agarwal, Bina. 2002)   

Even in the case of state transfers where the ownership is given jointly to husband and wife it is has been observed that is usually the husband who takes effective control of the land.

In Conclusion:

In conclusion it may be said that women seem to be wandering between two worlds-that of their parental homes and the other of their marital homes-in both of which there is reluctance to empower them with land ownership, especially where the socio-cultural-economic milieu militates heavily against such empowerment. However, the government is at best a hesitant reformer. Government policies end up mirroring the socio-cultural-economic milieu rather than radically reforming it, especially at the State and village levels. This is very perceptible in the regional variation in gender inequality.

Reforms have come in much faster in the southern States. Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka and Maharashtra have amended laws to do away with differential inheritance shares for men and women by including daughters as coparceners. Kerala has abolished joint family property altogether which, under the HSA, permitted sons to have rights by birth but not daughters.  This is largely because the socio-cultural-economic milieu in these States lends itself to reform. (Ibid)

 “South India has the fewest obstacles. Here legal rights are relatively more equal, in-village and close-kin marriage is allowed, there is virtually no purdah, and female labor force participation is medium to high. Northwest India is the area of most difficulty on all these fronts. Northeast and central India come in-between.” (Agarwal, Bina. 2002)

Changing mind-sets is essential to bring about the required reforms for which civil society is better equipped than the government. As pressure groups for change build up the government is likely to see advantage in initiating reforms at ground level. In other words, government usually prefers to sow the seed of reform in soil that has already been made fertile enough to reap political benefits.

References:

Agarwal, Bina. (2002)  Are We Not Peasants Too? Land Rights and Women’s Claims in India. The Population Council, Inc. Number 21, 2002 ISSN: 073-6833. University of Chicago. Available at ccc.uchicago/edu/docs/AreWeNotPeasantsToo.pdf. Accessed on 11/9/2017

Indian Women's Rights to Property: Implementation of the Hindu Succession (Amendment) Act, 2005. (14-03-2014). Available at natural-justice.blogspot.in/2014/03/Indian-Women’s-Rights-To-Property. Accessed on 11/9/2017

 Realizing Women’s Rights to Land and Other Productive Resources. (June 2012) Available at www.ohchr.org/documents/publications/realizingwomen’srighttstoland.pdf. Accessed on 11/9/2017]

Women's property rights.  (17 February 2017)  Available at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women’s_Property_Rights. Accessed on 11/9/17]

Interestingly we received around 10 responses from a journalist, two GO representatives, a land tenure expert, an academician, two explorer on different development agendas and three development practitioners, during the last two days of this online discussion on WLR.

Vandana Jena, having experience of being in Indian administration system, made a commendable comment by saying that states should consider giving group titles to women’s groups in which the tenancy laws need to be amended for allowing land leasing to women’s group and recognise these groups as a valid category of landowners. Additionally she says that even the joint pattas given while distributing government land could be made partitionable so that, if the wife desires to own this land singly, she can. She reiterates that through HSAA, not only daughters have got coparceners rights in the family agriculture land and property but various other provisions need to be reviewed strategically and in that suggests devolution of a woman’s property in the same manner as a man’s, restricting the right to will to prohibit disinheritance of wives and daughters, protecting WLR & property rights by eliminating forced coercion and ensuring that HSAA overrides State laws related to agricultural land.

With 38 years of experience in working with the State and Central government as an IAS, Ms. Rita Sinha discusses different aspects inhibiting WLR in great details; narrating government role as a reformist in supporting WLR she critically examines three aspects: government is motivated for reform when there is international pressure, political support is likely to expand and thirdly there is likelihood of filling state coffers by bringing in reforms. She further adds that by facilitating WLR there is no prospect for the govt. to enhance coffers and hence, only two earlier discussed conditions work in the country currently.  She makes her argument saying that the central government is more exposed to and hence likely for newer initiatives due to international pressure compared with the state govt. Since it is the Central government that makes commitments to various international covenants and Treaties the onus of commitment to certain causes falls on its shoulders and in its bid to project the country as a progressive, democratic state it sometimes initiates reforms that do not emanate from local demands but are imposed on State governments for implementation. In the case of granting WLR one would not be too off the mark to say that there has been a great international push for reforms. Several international conventions and bodies have emphasized the need to ensure gender equality as a human right in all spheres including granting of land rights. Several international policy instruments, principles, guidelines, recommendations and developmental goals have been laid down which participant countries are expected to follow, NFSA and SDGs act as such push for reforms. Sharing very important insight, she says that the Central government is more open to change than State governments because it is cushioned to some extent from the pressure of traditionalists resisting change, whereas State governments, being ‘nearer to the earth’ cannot afford to ignore them. This is clearly visible from the fact that the HSA has been amended faster than tenancy laws falling under the purview of the State Legislatures. State Governments often hesitate to take the initiative in changing customary laws for fear of backlash at the hustings.

Discussing the law implementation gaps in facilitating WLR she says that the lack of grievance redressal mechanism makes it enforcement weak. If women’s access to land and property are to become a reality some enforcement mechanism has to be built into the law for speedy remedy for non-compliance. Unleashing other aspects in the context of patriarchal norms, she further says that the practice of denying women access to land has a cause-and-effect relationship with a socio-cultural-economic milieu which includes denying women education and control over economic resources, imposing ritual taboos against women ploughing, imposing social restrictions on women’s mobility and enforcing ‘purdah’ or system of seclusion which restricts public interaction and eventually leads to lack of awareness about laws and rights, ensures that it is difficult to reverse the process. Discussing strategies as to what will work and help WLR she says that the government appears ill-equipped to deal with this socio-cultural-economic milieu. While it can easily ensure passage of legislation, it is difficult to visualize the government as a reformer of these social practices. Even penal clauses in a law will not work where women voluntarily forego their rights. The role of enlightened civil society in reversing public opinion is likely to be far more effectual, seldom have rights been handed over on a platter to the deprived; the latter have to be organized into a group that makes a vigorous demand for their rights and digs in its heels to fight for them. The beneficiaries eventually need to present themselves as a group that can influence political outcomes.

Mentioning the framework provided by the Voluntary Guidelines on the Responsible Governance of Tenure of Land, Fisheries and Forests in the Context of National Food Security (VGGT), Ms. Chamu says that it is one effective method of measuring success in relation to land rights and food security and satisfies measurement of SDG on WLR.  She mentions various indicators suggested in the treaty and emphasises that the State should ensure WLR by taking measures in changing land tenures, working towards eliminating patriarchal mindset and coming up with relevant resolutions to well implement laws.

Sabita in her article mentions very clearly about the various SDGs that supports WLR and indicates that in August 2014, a directive was sent out by the then Secretary, Department of Land Resources, MoRD, GoI, to the Chief Secretaries of all States and Union Territories, for capturing the gender-disaggregated land ownership data. And digitization of the land records, initiated by the Union Government for effective and efficient management and maintenance of the land records, could have been a greater tool for providing gender-disaggregated data on WLR - especially ownership status . However, despite dedicating special code to capture gender-disaggregated data, code 14, following the state land records manual; however, initial technical report of the DILRMP programme by the DoLR found that none of the states captured gender-disaggregated data . The software used in the land digitisation programme can be updated/flexible enough to capture the nuanced land ownership data including women land ownership. In the Western regional consultation of MAKAAM held in Pune, Ms. Leena Mehendale, Ex-settlement commissioner said that the software used for the land record digitisation is not open-ended software that restricts the incorporation of the new parameters and limits the data mining. And hence, she has provided valid suggestions on data recording in details on data collection mechanisms, monitoring, capacity building and creating infrastructure for data collection, validation and monitoring. Mentioning the voices from grassroots from one of consultations held with women farmers, she reiterates that right over the marital land should be automatically transferred to women at the marriage and the rights should not be depended on the interest and whims of the family, relatives or the religious heads. Land tenure security, as suggested by women, should make their consent compulsory during the land selling to increase their decision making and ownership over the land. Further, the required consent process should be legal as many women forced to release their land claim under social and family pressure.

In line with Sabita, Sonali discusses that the SDGs have prominent mention of WLR the government even within its laws, policies and programmes been conservative towards women’s participation in the true sense, whatever voices have been incorporated is not adequate and reiterates need to have gender desegregated data on women’s land ownership.

While GO representatives have suggested systems and mechanisms hindering and supportive WLR, Niyati, an explorer in this subject shares her experience as to how community women trained in various laws are vital in realizing women’s land ownership along with the local women’s collectives who extend support in social constraints. Karol in conformity with Niyati ruther adds that such social strategies needs to be devised and executed as per the local context and says that male champions is one such strategies. However, she says that research in this area is need of the hour.

Rina, a journalist indicates the relationship between land and property rights of women and violence against women (VAW) and quotes NCRB data of incidents of VAWs, she says that India recorded 3,27,394 reports of violence against women, including cruelty by husbands, in 2015, up more than 40 percent from 2011, while there are no separate data on how many of these cases are related to property. Fearing violence, women often do not assert their claim to property. But this only makes more vulnerable, as they then live in constant fear of being thrown out by their brothers, husband or in-laws. Land rights are essential to ending domestic violence, which is key achieving goal five on gender equality and empowerment for women and girls.

Neeta Hardikar, a very senior development practitioner in consonance with Rina says that women from Dalit, Adivasi community and those who are single especially branded as ‘witch’ so as to snatch away the rightful land/ property she would own. In following this practice she says, the community use the services of the ‘Badva- Bhopa’ men who “authorize” labeling. And these men have sanction by local social, religious and political leaders who want to target the woman through illicit means and practices. Discussing her experience of working with ANANDI and Devgadh Mahila Sangathan, she says that the sangathan member use lot of folk art forms like songs and theatre in raising community awareness and that has brought some positive results. Mentioning their efforts on spreading awareness on this issue, they tied up with different 3 stakeholders, the NGO, local CBO and the Police and did performances on “Koi Ben Dakan Nathi” (NO WOMAN IS A WITCH) in 4 tribal districts. Sighting ANANDI’s study of the year 2014 based on Police records for year 2011-2013 for 7 blocks of 3 tribal districts of eastern Gujarat she indicates some insights on role of police in cases of witch hunting and violence on women. The study revealed that only 4 per cent of the total 246 cases were registered as FIR, 28.6 percent women were unable to cultivate their own land due to violence, 21.4 per cent women were unable to work on their land due to physical disability caused by the perpetrators, 14.3 per cent were forced to out migrate with family for safety and shelter and 7.14 per cent had lost control on property including land. Suggesting way forward, she says that much needs to be done: sensitization, mobilisation, influencing and setting accountability of police, the revenue department, media, shaping public opinion to end VAW and livelihoods safety to the violence survivors and much more.

Warmly,

Sejal Dave