By Sanchita Kadam
Dehradun, July 22, 2020: The Uttarakhand government plans to amend a 70-year-old law to give land ownership rights to women along with their husbands.
Chief Minister Trivendra Singh Rawat says they would amend the Zamindari Abolition and Land Reforms Act of 1950 to make the northern Indian state’s plan effective.
“Traditionally in the hilly areas, men and their wives are involved in the farming on their land. However, men are largely involved in just heavy labor intensive work like ploughing of the field and remaining about 90 percent farming related works are done by their wives only. Despite that they don’t have any ownership of that piece of land but their husbands,” Rawat told a public meeting on July 20
Since ownership does not lie with women, they are unable to take loan for any farming related work. The status quo is unfair since women do maximum work on fields and yet, are deprived of ownership rights.
The amendment will give them ownership rights on land they work while making them self-dependent and will contribute towards women empowerment.
According to the Agricultural Census 2010-2011, at least 12.78 percent of the total operational holdings in India were operated by women.
A research paper by Prakriti Sharma of the Department of Policy Studies TERI School of Advanced Studies terms as dismal the asset ownership status of women in Uttarakhand.
The paper states that with agriculture as the primary activity of most households in the state, 60.25 percent households owned about 17,000 square feet land or less. As many as 89 percent women did not have property rights over that land.
As the details of the amendment not disclosed, it is unclear as to what kind of ownership rights the state will confer on a wife. However, many see it as a move towards gender equality with immense significance in women’s rights jurisprudence and legislation in the long run.
Women’s right to ownership of land in India
Property rights have predominantly favor men giving women less chance to acquire or inherit property. Amendments to succession law and property law have created space for women to own land and inherit land, albeit in a limited sense.
The Hindu Succession Act was the first law to provide a comprehensive and uniform system of inheritance among Hindus and to address gender inequalities in the area of inheritance. It gave women absolute right of ownership over land. It still lacks in not giving daughters the right to be coparcener or in simple terms having the right to a property by virtue of birth.
States such as Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Kerala, Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu have already amended laws to include daughter as a coparcener by birth in her own right. It enables her to have equal share in such coparcenary property. daughters In these states also can dispose such inherited property.
Women farmers in India
In 2011, the Women Farmers’ Entitlements Bill was introduced in Rajya Sabha, but it lapsed.
It sought to give women farmers equal ownership and inheritance rights over her husband’s self-acquired agricultural land, or his share of family property, or his share of land transferred by the government under land reform or resettlement scheme.
Such ownership did not need to be proved by way of document but a woman would be deemed to have ownership in such land and the fact that she is the wife of a particular person is the conclusive proof to claim ownership.
This bill would have given considerable impetus to women empowerment and attainment of gender equality had it been passed by the Parliament, experts say.
Source: sabrangindia.in