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Pushpa Kadale was nine months pregnant and had a two-and-a-half-year-old daughter when one night at 4 am, her husband asked her to leave the house.
With no money and no place to go, the then 20-year-old borrowed money from a neighbour in Thanapada village of Nashik district in Maharashtra, to take a shared taxi to her parents’ home in Gawandh village, 18 km away. Kadale was a farmer who cultivated the six acres her husband owned.
Now, she cultivates the two acres her father owns. Essentially, her situation is no different – she remains without a title to the land she tills, and, hence, without economic or social security.
“I worked all day at my husband’s farm in Thanapada. He did help me with the ploughing and selling the produce, but I did most of the work,” said Kadale, 32, listing out the relentless cycle of sowing, weeding and harvesting that farming entails.
Like Kadale, many women farmers in India do not own the land that they cultivate. In a country where 73.2% of rural women workers are engaged in agriculture, women own only 12.8% of land holdings.
In Maharashtra, 88.46% of rural women are employed by agriculture, the highest in the country. In western Maharashtra’s Nashik district, women own only 15.6% of the agricultural land holdings, amounting to 14% of the total cultivated area, as per the Agricultural Census of 2015.
Research has long established that women who own land have better economic and social security. “By diminishing the threat of forced eviction or poverty, direct and secure land rights boost women’s bargaining power in the home and improve their levels of public participation,” said a 2013 report by the United Nations.
Land transfer in India occurs mainly through inheritance and this is mediated through a series of religion-centric personal laws. As per the Hindu Succession Act (HSA), after a male Hindu’s death, the land has to be divided among the widow, the mother and the children of the deceased.
HSA is also applicable to people following Sikhism, Buddhism or Jainism.
Muslim women under the Muslim personal law get one-third of the share in property, while men get two-thirds. This is not applicable to agricultural land, except in some states. As per the Indian Succession Act, 1925, Christian widows will get one-third of the property while the remaining two-thirds will be divided equally between the children of the deceased.
In Gawandh village, Jijabai Gawli, 40, has been cultivating her husband’s 10 acres for 20 years. However, after her husband’s death seven years ago, she was not given the primary ownership of the land. “The land is firstly owned by my sister-in-law, then my mother-in-law, then my children,” said Gawli, “And as their guardian, I am named last.”
“In our culture, women do not have the right to land,” said Gawli, “My eldest daughter got married two years ago and works on her husband’s land. They will not transfer their land to her. She is an outsider.”
As many as 29% of the wives of indebted farmers who committed suicide were not able to get their husband’s land transferred to their names, said a 2018 study by Mahila Kisan Adhikar Manch (MAKAAM), an informal forum working to secure rights of women farmers in India.
Of the 505 women that were covered in the study, 65% were not able to get their houses transferred to their names.
Savita Gaikwad, 31, has been cultivating the 15 guntha (0.375 acre) of land that her father-in-law owns in Nashik’s Songaon village since her marriage 13 years ago. Three years ago, her husband committed suicide because he could not pay back a Rs 1.5 lakh farm loan. Since then, she and her two sons, aged 12 and nine, have been dependent on her husband’s family and her father-in-law’s land.
“The farm requires an expenditure of Rs 10,000-Rs 11,000 annually and the returns depend on the yield. Last year, there was not much yield so I could not earn anything,” said Gaikwad, adding, “I need at least Rs 2,000 per month to take care of all the basic necessities for me and my sons.”
In order to make ends meet, Gaikwad takes up work as an agricultural labourer for a daily wage of Rs 150, in addition to working on her farm.
Gaikwad also worries that someday she may be asked to vacate her house. Two years ago, her father-in-law took a loan on the land to build a new house where he, his wife, his son and daughter-in-law live. Gaikwad lives independently with her children in a house made with tin sheets held up with wooden beams.
Women’s access to government schemes and other facilities is curtailed when the land they till is not in their name, said Seema Kulkarni, a member of the national facilitation team at MAKAAM.
The National Policy for Farmers, 2007 recommended a broader definition of a farmer, including labourers, tenants and other workers, but the government’s definition is based on ownership of land.
The revenue department defines a farmer based on the land title records and the agriculture department follows the revenue department’s definitions, Kulkarni said. “Hence, most of the schemes require the submission of land title record, limiting the beneficiary base to landowners,” she said.
In cases of farm suicides, access to institutional credit is of increased importance. After the death of the husband, the burden of paying off the debt falls on the widow.
Gaikwad said she has not yet been able to repay her husband’s debt. “Some people had come to ask me for the money. But I told them of my situation. So they left,” said Gaikwad, “They might come back and I don’t know what I will do or how will I pay them.”
The Maharashtra government provides an ex gratia amount of Rs 1 lakh to the family of an indebted farmer who commits suicide. However, the death must be declared as farmer suicide for the family to get the money.
Gaikwad said she has not yet received the ex-gratia amount and that she has no idea about the procedure to get it.
To increase women farmers’ access to government schemes, the Maharashtra government on June 18, 2019 passed a government resolution to transfer the land title (called the 7/12 extract in Maharashtra) to the widow of the farmer who committed suicide.
The resolution also states that widows will be given priority in access to government schemes and assistance cells shall be created at district level for the widows.
IndiaSpend tried contacting the officials at the Maharashtra revenue and forest department to know more about the implementation of the resolution but has not received a response yet.
We visited the office of the principal secretary, Manu Kumar Srivastava, sent the office two emails and tried contacting him via the telephone five times. We will update this story if and when we receive a response
(This was first published on IndiaSpend and has been republished with permission)
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Published: 09 Sep 2019,04:18 PM IST