Rural paralegals ensure women’s land rights in Gujarat
Trained paralegal workers come to the aid of women who are denied their landholding rights and hence lose out on government schemes, by helping them get the land registered in their name.
Lalitaben, an adivasi woman with two girl children, lost her husband Kantibhai, in 2021. She depended on the yield from their very fertile irrigated one-acre land in Meghraj taluk in Gujarat and income from wage labour for survival and continuing her girls’ education. But in the absence of male heirs, Kantibhai’s brothers opposed transferring the title of his share of the family land to Lalitaben and her daughters.
Similarly, Sharifaben, a 60-year-old illiterate widow and mother of a married daughter, struggled for 18 years to get her name mutated in records of her husband’s share of land at Patdi taluk in the state. The brothers of her deceased husband and their families opposed her.
The women’s situation changed when they turned to paralegal workers affiliated to the Working Group for Women and Land Ownership (WGWLO) for help.
Joint advocacy for women’s land rights
WGWLO or Mahila Jamin Maliki nu Karyakari Juth is a network of 20 non-government organisations (NGOs), 21 rural community-based organisations (CBOs) and five individuals helping women secure land titles across 17 of the 33 districts of Gujarat.
It was the research of Bina Agarwal, then a professor of economics at the Institute of Economic Growth, New Delhi, which prompted the formation of the network in 2002. The research, conducted in 1994, highlighted the struggles of rural women without legal titles to their land.
The group has been instrumental in challenging patriarchal mindsets and empowering rural women to assert their rights and become legal land owners. Even though Indian laws and policies give women the right to own assets, women in patriarchal societies, especially in rural areas, often cannot exercise their rights over cultivable land, which is necessary for their survival and livelihood.
Resistance to women owning land
Women in rural Gujarat are no exception and face the problem as in most other parts of the country. Married women are often denied joint land ownership when they have no male child. Young widows face resistance from the marital family, who fear that they will remarry and move away. Daughters experience bias too.
Bharatbhai lives with his wife’s maternal family and manages their ancestral land in Sagbara block. It is an acceptable practice in their tribal community for families that don’t have sons. His mother-in-law was concerned about her daughter and her grandchildren’s right to her late husband’s share of ancestral land, after she was threatened by her in-laws against seeking any partition or mutation.
Often men manipulate the village panch and land records to their advantage and threaten women with violent consequences to prevent claims on land titles. The resistance to transfer productive land is obviously the highest.
The lack of legal land ownership can be a significant obstacle to the women being recognised as farmers by the government. The women cannot access government schemes like Kisan Credit, input and agri-equipment subsidy or PM Kisan Samman Nidhi. And they cannot purchase agricultural land in future.
A multi-pronged strategy
To address the issue of women’s land ownership, WGWLO executed an awareness-action-advocacy strategy.
Using posters, the WGWLO members fostered discussions on women’s land rights, a topic that was once taboo. They invited women to witness the mamlatdar (revenue official) or collector hand over legal documents to other women after mutation. This improved the women’s basic awareness of land rights.
Armed with formal legal literacy training, they helped in challenging patriarchal mindsets and empowering women to assert their rights. Active women leaders of CBOs were selected and trained in legal literacy, empowering them as paralegal workers (PLWs) to address conflicts at the family level. Since 2013, CBOs have established swa-bhumi kendras run by women PLWs to support women in securing their land title.
WGWLO also trained and sensitised village revenue officials with the concurrence of the state government. Special training modules for talatis (village accountants) responsible for maintaining land records at village level were designed, and 3,200 talatis were trained through the Panchayati Raj kendra. After four years, the state government included these modules in regular talati training.
Convincing family members
Facilitating continuous dialogue at family and village levels is crucial in reaching amicable settlements. The PLWs concerned helped Lalitaben and Sharifaben by explaining their legal rights to resisting family members.
Establishing pedhinamu (mutation for ancestral land) requires the woman to contact respected community members as witnesses of her possession. PLWs in both cases organised five witnesses from the community – referred to as panch.
The extended family agreed to varsai (ownership through succession) in the presence of the panch, making it legally binding. Sometimes dialogue helped to allay the fears of family members of entitled women taking more than their due.
Coordinating with the administration
In cases of fraud or technical errors in revenue records, WGWLO works with government officials to make the necessary corrections. Sometimes, when there is an outstanding loan secured against the land title of the late predecessor, the transfer of the title is stalled. The team works with the successors to create a common understanding on clearing the outstanding amount to free the title and apportion repayment responsibility.
For converting recalcitrant local administrative officials like talati and mamlatdar hailing from the same patriarchal society into allies for title transfer to women, dialogue with the government officers, including the district collector, has helped.
While dealing with the bureaucracy, it is also important to take the dialogue to the appropriate level. Laxmiben and seven others had got two acres as a grant from the government at Rajgadh in Surendranagar district. But the forest department claimed the land as a forest area. When efforts by WGWLO at taluka and sub-district over six years failed, it was taken to the district collector, who in his capacity as district land grant officer, resolved it in just one meeting of all stakeholders.
Policy advocacy
When issues beyond the existing remit of law prevent resolution, advocacy through dialogue at the highest level in the administration is pursued.
In order to avoid future conflicts during varsai and enable women to benefit from government schemes as farmers, the men often agreed to include them as joint owners of arable land but the stamp duty payable proved to be a deterrent to poor families. Through WGWLO’s advocacy this was brought down to Rs 100.
Empowered women
WGWLO’s work has reduced the cost and time needed by rural women in Gujarat to secure legal titles to their land. The average cost of securing a title through WGWLO intervention has been about Rs 1,000 and it has been mostly done within 3-12 months of applying.
By March 2019, WGWLO had helped 8,818 women (mostly OBC and ST) secure land titles. Some women who got land titles became leaders, helping other women become landowners, or took to working on women’s issues. Some took up organic farming, while some others chose to go for share-cropping.
Most of them feel empowered on gaining a new identity as a woman farmer. They have begun to take decisions within their own families and villages.
The lead image at the top shows an awareness session being held to enhance legal literacy of rural women. (Photo courtesy WGWLO)
Astad Pastakia is an Ahmedabad-based freelance development consultant for sustainable agriculture and livelihoods. Vijay Parmar is a human and institutional development professional and the managing trustee of Janvikas. Shaswati Ghose is a freelance researcher based in Ranchi.
