ENSURE SINGLE WOMEN’S RIGHT TO HOMESTEAD LAND
Monday, 06 April 2015 | NABA KISHORE PUJARI |
Sabita Sahu, a 35-year old woman of Mundamarai village of Dharakot Tehsil of Ganjam district met with an accident when she was just two years old. Her family was not able to provide proper medical care; as a result, Sabita lost her mobility. As she grew older, she was not sent to school because of her limited mobility. To support her brothers who were working as seasonal agricultural labourers, Sabita started doing paper bags. Gradually she introduced colourful, designed bags which got well appreciated in the local market.
She was offered with bulk offers during puja and festival seasons. But being in a small house and with limited physical ability, she was not able to meet the demand. Odisha Government’s Single Women Land Rights programme brought a solution to Sabita’s problems. Sabita being a single woman with disabilities matched the beneficiary eligibility criteria to receive a homestead plot of 40 decimal in Mundamarai village. The detestable life of U Chandramma also came to an end when she was privileged to own a house under Single Women Land Rights Project. The Women Support Centre found Chandramma eligible for being a single abandoned woman and allotted her a concrete house along with electric connection, water and sanitation facility to lead a comfortable and dignified life. Recalling her past days, U Chandramma said, “Earlier, I had to adjust with what I was offered to live, but when my sons came to know about the land and house ownership in my name, they rushed to me and requested to forgive them for their misconduct and now I regained my dignity.”
The stories of these two single women can amplify that a land patta in the name of women can change their lives. Intricacies of single women’s land rights and the vulnerability of their livelihoods should be understood historically, taking into account long-term changes in colonial times and the history of political turbulence and economic stagnation. Though the Constitution of India mandates gender equality, but the command of non-discrimination does not reach the religious and customary laws that dictate most property rights relative to marriage, divorce, and inheritance. The literature, which focuses on land tenure and property relations, emphasises the fact that single women are in a disadvantaged position through patriarchal systems of succession to land. It looks at the end of women’s marital relationships, through death of the male spouse or divorce. Single women (widowed, divorced, never married) are seen as a deviation from the norm.
In Odisha, non-profit organizations like Landesa, ActionAid and many others are working with district and State administrations to ensure land rights for single women. ActionAid has collaborated with district and block administrations to establish a responsive institutional delivery system to ensure women’s access to and control over land. However, if we take note of data of Census of 2001, 7.4 per cent of the female population of India is single. There were 3, 43, 89,729 widows in India and 23,42, 930 divorced/separated women in our country. In 2011 Census, we have also missed to include around 40 million single women population in the enumeration who have remained single by their choice or never married. If we add these two, then certainly the single women population in our country will be much higher.
The Planning Commission in its 12th five year Plan (2012-17) has proposed that schemes like the Indira Awas Yojana and the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme should earmark a percentage for single women. Attention would also be given on providing legal aid for ensuring entitlements and matrimonial rights to single women. Interestingly, Food and Agriculture Organization in its report has highlighted very important prospects of women’s contribution towards increasing agricultural output. The report stated that women make up 43 per cent of the agricultural labour force in developing countries and further the report reveals that if these women had the same access to productive resources as men, they could increase yields on their farm up to 20 to 30 per cent, raising total agricultural output in developing countries by 2.5 per cent to 4 per cent.
The State Revenue Department undertook a survey in 2003 to identify landless families in the State and found that there are as many as 2, 49,334 landless families in the State and these families do not have a roof over their heads. Therefore in 2005-06, the State Government launched ‘Vasundhara’ scheme to provide land to those landless families whose annual income must not exceed Rs 15,000. In order to give preference to widows, unmarried women, victimized women and women living below the poverty line, in 2002, the State Government decided to allot at least 40 per cent of the Government wasteland kept for agriculture and house site purpose, ceiling surplus land and Bhoodan land.
The Government also stressed that at least 40 per cent of this land should be allotted to women belonging to the Scheduled Tribes and Scheduled Castes. The Orissa Rehabilitation & Resettlement Policy, 2006 also has some progressive features such as unmarried daughters/sisters more than 30 years of age should be treated as separate families. Physically challenged persons, orphans who are minors, widows and women divorcees are also to be treated as separate families.
A piece of land brings self-esteem and dignity to a woman’s life and can check multiple vulnerabilities that often come into her life. It is now important that the Government must act proactively to develop a policy to define single women, identify eligible women for entitlement of homestead land patta and ensure other property rights as part of its mainstreaming women into the process of contributing towards national growth.
Source: http://www.dailypioneer.com/state-editions/bhubaneswar/ensure-single-womens-right-to-homestead-land.html
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