What kind of impact will allowing women to own land under their own names have on India?

Undoubtedly, along with education, economic self-sufficiency is the cornerstone for a woman's emancipation and autonomy, be it in India or anywhere else. However, in India at least two powerful obstacles stand in their way. One, all too often prevailing local cultural practices trump laws. Two, rural landholding sizes are shrinking fast in India. Since most Indians are still rural, this adversely impacts women's emancipation through land ownership.

In India, All Too Often Local Cultural Practices Trump Laws

Dowry laws prove this all too unambiguously. Bridegroom and/or his family demanding dowry from the bride's family remains a mainstay in many parts of India (Dowry system in India). Obviously commoditizing women, the dowry system constitutes systemic, structural abuse. When dowry's deemed insufficient, women are physically and psychologically abused, threatened, terrorized (1), even killed (2). Given the pernicious effects stemming from its systemic prevalence, the Indian Parliament passed the Dowry Prevention Act in 1961 (3). Neither demands for dowry nor dowry deaths abated so much so that the law was amended in 1983 (4) with a view to strengthening it. Did dowry demands and deaths stop? A decided no. The National Crime Records Bureau is the government agency that maintains records of all reported cognizable crimes in India. Their data show that ~1 woman is killed over dowry every hour (see Table 5(A) in 5). To top it, we have no way of knowing how accurate these data sets even are, and given dowry represents subjugation, under-reporting is more than likely.

Indian Rural Landholding's Shrinking Fast

Most Indians are still rural. For e.g., in 2011, ~833 million Indians (~69%) lived rurally compared to ~377 million in cities (6). Yet, individual rural landholding plot sizes almost halved in India since 1992 (See figures below from 6, 7, 8).

Rather than helping empower women through landholding, this trend disfavors them by increasing competition for land in an enormous, decidedly male-dominated culture.

Available data bear out both these concerns. ~400 million Indian women are rural. Almost 80% of them work in agriculture or related work, and are responsible for ~70% and 90% of food and dairy production,respectively. Yet <13% own the land (9) even as agriculture contributes 14 to 15% of India's GDP (10, 11). Glance at random at an Indian news piece about agriculture. Without fail, men are described as farmers. Women? As agricultural workers. Extent of gender-based disenfranchisement is so deep it casually pervades even the frame the highly educated use to examine salient issues.

Irony is India's Constitutional Fundamental Rights guarantees equality of opportunity and rights to all citizens (12). As well, the Hindu Succession Amendment Act 2005 was a landmark progressive and pro-women piece of legislation in a ~1.3 billion population where~80% are Hindu. However, cultural practices all too easily subvert and/or thwart laws allowing Indian women to own land under their own names. Prevailing culture ingrains subservience in women from an early age so lack of awareness and information is a major impediment.Women are thus easily pressured/coerced into writing off their property in favor of their brothers or other male relatives. Dowry's still prevalent so a woman's not considered eligible for more share post-marriage even when she patently is under the law.

Data suggest such socio-cultural practices severely limit Indian women's access to land ownership (9). For e.g., in West Bengal state, the government land title document, patta, had space for only one name. Even when meant to give joint ownership to husband and wife, practice was to write the husband's name as the family head. Only recently has the patta been re-designed to provide joint land titles to both husband and wife. Even when the patta is in their names with their photographs, as in the states of Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka, women typically never see it and believe their husbands have the title. Research in Odisha state uncovered that >30 year old single men, but not women, were considered a household. Such women weren't counted and thus denied access to government welfare schemes including land allocation. Only after this was uncovered did the state government start a program to count such single women in a few districts, and start allocating them homestead plots (9).

Despite such steep barriers, women landholders are a barely perceptible but growing segment in different parts of rural India.

How Landholding Could Help Indian Women's Empowerment

A 2005 Indian study showed women who owned land were 60% less likely to be subjected to domestic violence (13).

A 2007 Nepalese study showed landholding women have greater decision making power at home and their children are less likely to be severely malnourished (14).

A 2008 Ethiopian study showed landholding men and women invest twice as much time on its soil and water conservation (15). Implication? Ownership makes people better stewards of their land and environment.

Case studies of Indian landholding women reveal (see photos below from 16, 17).

• Their living standards and confidence improve.
• They command their community's respect.
• They garner greater decision making in their families.

All too easily overlooked barring an occasional news report, the impossibly slender shoulders of extraordinarily strong women like Chandra Subramanian carry an inordinate burden (photos below from 18). Following local tradition, she was married to her aunt's son at16. Husband and wife worked in a hosiery factory in Tiruppur, the knitwear capital of India. At 24, her father was killed in a road accident. Her husband committed suicide 40 days later. Such twin blows would prostrate the ordinary, not Chandra. This plucky mother's story reveals a person of remarkable strength, wit, and resilience (18). Chandra's mother inherited a 12 acre property on her husband's death and split it equally between her three children. Now 28, on her 4 acre share, Chandra grows vegetables, paddy, sugarcane, corn. Working almost 16 hours a day, she's up at 4 AM performing household chores and fixing her children's lunch. After harvesting vegetables, she walks her kids to school, then heads back to the fields until lunch. On market days, she packs her vegetable sacks on her moped and rides the 15 kms to the nearest town, Sivaganga, to sell her fresh produce. The photos documenting Chandra's life are a tonic. They declare in no uncertain terms that the truly intrepid can just buck up and keep going, no matter what.

That her mother inherited her father's land is the 1st critical emancipating event in this saga. Next, that Chandra inherited an equal land share from her mother is the 2nd critical emancipating event. So much else that's essential for a woman's emancipation is invisible and needs must be gleaned from reading between the lines. That a single woman alone on a farm is likely safe in this part of India. Implies a fully functioning local law and order machinery. That the local culture accepts financially independent single women. The astounding can-do spirit of Chandra and her ilk represent the best humanity offers but it can only blossom when laws aren't mere lip-service but actually implemented in deed. This is where there's many a slip between cup and lip in India.

Bibliography

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12. Rao, Nitya. "Women’s access to land: An Asian perspective." Expert paper prepared for the UN Group Meeting ‘Enabling Rural Women’s Economic Empowerment: Institutions, Opportunities and Participation’. Accra, Ghana. 2011. http://www.un.org/womenwatch/daw...
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15. Deininger, Klaus, Daniel Ayalew Ali, and Tekie Alemu. "Impacts of land certification on tenure security, investment, and land market participation: evidence from Ethiopia." Land Economics 87.2 (2011): 312-334. http://www.umb.no/statisk/ncde-2...
16. In pictures: How the right to own land transformed the lives of these five women. The Scroll, Anisa Draboo, March 8, 2016. http://scroll.in/article/804799/...
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18. Small farmer, big heart, miracle bike. The Hindu, Aparna Karthikeyan, March 8, 2016. http://www.thehindu.com/news/nat...

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