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Inheritance Rights of Women in Agricultural Land

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Inheritance Rights of Women in Agricultural Land


 
The clinching argument in favour of land titles to women is the stability and security it provides and the protection it affords from marital violence


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 percent of all male workers are in agriculture as against 75 percent of all female workers, and this gap is rising. Further, an estimated 20 percent of rural households 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 our patriarchal society. It has been estimated that in India, landownership in favour of women is not more than 2 percent (Agarwal 1995). 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. It may be recalled that Zamindari was abolished some sixty years back on considerations of both efficiency and equity. The discrepancy between the ownership and operation of land was regarded as one of the basic maladies of agrarian structure that acted as a ‘built-in-depressor’. It led to not only inefficient utilisation of given scarce resources but also stood in the way of augmenting these resources. Thus in every state the policy of abolishing all intermediary interests and giving ownership to the actual operator on land was adopted soon after independence. Time is ripe now to do so for women farmers too.

In addition to improved production, the clinching argument in favour of land titles to women is the stability and security it provides, the protection it affords from marital violence, and 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.

Why land is important for women

Role of NGOs in India

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Role of NGOs in India


NGOs can and should play the “game changer” to pro-poor development through leadership on participatory research, community empowerment and search for development alternatives
 

In a democratic society, it is the state that has the ultimate responsibility for ushering development to its citizens. In India, through the progressive interpretation of the Constitution and its laws and policies, the scope of development has been significantly broadened to include not just economic progress for citizens, but also promotion of social justice, gender equity, inclusion, citizen’s awareness, empowerment and improved quality of life. To achieve this holistic vision of development, the state requires the constructive and collaborative engagement of the civil society in its various developmental activities and programs. Non-governmental organisations (NGOs) as the operational arm of the civil society therefore have an important role in the development processes.

Defining Non-Government Organisations

In its most general usage, civil society refers to all voluntarily constituted social relations, institutions, and organisations that are not reducible to the administrative grasp of the state. NGOs are organisations within the civil society that work on the “not-for-profit” approach in the space which exists between the family (household), market and state. It is made up of several types of formal voluntary organisations, where people based on community, neighbourhood, workplace and other connections form their association to participate in actions for their own collective interests or for larger social good. Those NGOs which are working at the global arena, across several countries are termed as international NGOs.

A COMMITMENT TO VOLUNTARY SECTOR

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The National Policy on the Voluntary Sector is a testament of our commitment to encourage, enable and empower an independent and effective voluntary sector

As Member responsible for Voluntary Action Cell in the Planning Commission of India for seven years now, I have been part of the effort to bring people close to the planning process. Initially, we started a ‘Civil Society Window’ in 2004, in the hope that it would enable people to engage with the Planning Commission and offer the benefit of their field experiences. We managed to take some of the learning from there into the 11th Five Year Plan. This initiative crystallized within a year and is now part of the Planning architecture.
During the 11th Five Year Plan process we organized a regional consultation to get civil society feedback. Participation of Civil Society (CS) had thus already become a strong and robust element in the preparation of the Plan.

UID Technology System

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UID Technology System



Besides the social benefits, the technology benefits to the Government sector could be manifold. The UID Technology would enable creation of an e-governance cloud platform to be shared by central and state governments


Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) has been created by the Government of India as an attached office under the Planning Commission. Its role is to develop and implement the necessary institutional, technical and legal infrastructure to issue Unique Identity numbers to Indian residents. UIDAI has adopted the name Aadhaar for the 12-digit unique number which it will issue for all residents. The number will be stored in a centralized database and will be linked to the basic demographics and biometric information – photograph, ten fingerprints and iris – of each individual. The features of the Aadhaar will be that this number will only provide identity and prove identity not citizenship, and facilitate enrolment of residents with proper verification and adoption of a partnership model. The UIDAI will be the regulatory authority managing a Central ID Repository (CIDR), which will issue UID numbers, update resident information and authenticate the identity of the residents as required.

Aadhaar Number in India

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The Possibilities of Aadhaar Number


The Aadhaar number is a powerful tool as governments move to more individual-oriented programs. It is an identification infrastructure available to every resident in India, including infants


Economic growth is not an end in itself; its power lies in the ability it gives us, the financial wherewithal to address the many problems that a developing country faces. Governments in India have accordingly, with economic growth, implemented new social programs and safety nets that tackle our poverty, health and education challenges. The ambitions of these programs however, have been marred by challenges in execution, and a significant one has been the lack of clear identification and targeting of individual beneficiaries.

The problems of identification bog down millions of people in India across communities and in different situations. Rural women for example, face difficulties in accessing social benefits and employment, especially if they are not part of a household; most benefits and programs, as well as identity mechanisms are linked to households, and single women or widows are excluded as a result. Backward communities and tribal groups similarly find themselves caught in a cycle of exclusion, where the lack of one service cuts off identification documents and consequently access to other services, such as when the inability to get a ration card also means difficulty in opening a bank account.

 

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