Building the movement for women’s land rights
Make the vested lands available to a women’s group and give them their entitlement. Technology is agricultural, in the form of farming and land cultivation, leading to nutrition and livelihood. We plan to make seed banks, nurseries and grain golas to ensure sustainability.
Sobre ti
Sección 1: Sobre ti
Nombre
sikha
Apellido
roy
Website
Country
India
Sección 2: Sobre tu organización
Is your initiative connected to an established organization?
Nombre de la organización
SRREOSHI
Sitio web de la organización
Teléfono de la organización
Dirección de la organización
País de la organización
India
Tu organización es
OSC/ONG
How long has this organization been operating?
1-5 años
La información que brindes aquí será usada para llenar las partes de tu perfil que hayan sido dejadas en blanco, como intereses, organización, y sitio web. Ninguna información de contacto será hecha pública. Por favor desmarca esta casilla si no deseas que esto suceda..
tu idea
Name Your Project
Building the movement for women’s land rights
Describe Your Idea
Make the vested lands available to a women’s group and give them their entitlement. Technology is agricultural, in the form of farming and land cultivation, leading to nutrition and livelihood. We plan to make seed banks, nurseries and grain golas to ensure sustainability.
Country your work focuses on
India
Innovación
What makes your idea unique?
Working on women’s land & property rights is unique in the context of West Bengal state. With land being denied to women, land issues have led to violence against them. Moreover, the link of land to nutrition and sustainable agriculture is undeniable. Access to land ensures women’s control over the produce of the land. The income generated through the cultivation also adds value. The issue of collective farming comes to predominance in this way of work. Another feature of the work is it has in a way enabled reducing migration of women in a way to the nearby stone-crushers for the entire day in search of work. The work environment at these crushers is hazardous in a way and also women face wage differential and sexual abuse at these sites. These women also have to bear the household responsibilities, looking after children along with working in these places because of the gendered structure of society. Thus, this work in a way is helping women work, earn, and secure their food through collective farming in localities near their homes. The health hazard and sexual abuse is also minimized in the process. The work also has a sustainability plan to it. Along with women getting entitlement to land, control over resources, the plan of building up seed bank, nursery, grain golas for groups will eventually help them attain a status where by they would be in a continuous state of income generation and sustained nutrition for the family.
Do you have a patent for this idea?
Impacto
Esta presentación se trata de
Tell us about the social impact of your innovation. Please include both numbers and stories as evidence of this impact
The entitlement of land in names of women and the eventual control over resources have given women certain confidence with which they have been able to keep an increased participation in decision making within the household and within community. The working in groups has also developed a community sense within them. Women have also gained opportunities of sustained income and control over the income. The nutrition level of the family is also being ascertained in the process. This has led to an overall improvement in the food habits and style of lives of the families. Another major impact has been reduced in the level of migration of women to earn for their families and this has in the process reduced their health hazards, sexual harassments that they faced in those work places (mainly stone-crushers). Conditions of children have also improved in a way with mother being around and nutrition level getting better than what it used to be.
Problem: Describe the primary problem(s) that your innovation is addressing
The primary problem encountered has been political interventions, especially in matters of identifying vested lands and allotting them to women’s group in villages. There have been objections at political levels, where there is an overall feeling that these should be allotted to men of the families, as they are principal bread earners and thought to be more efficient. There have also been oppositions from different families from the feeling that their women folk are gaining control and starting to have says in certain matters. There has also been problem in getting the groups together, encouraging them to work together, to inculcate feelings of community, since women mostly have stayed within the households and at certain levels lack the sense of community due to their gendered reality.
Actions: Describe the steps that you are taking to make your innovation a success. What might prevent that success?
The primary step has been to work with local government bodies and ensure their participation in the work through sustained advocacy efforts. Building women’s group in the communities and facilitating different capacity building trainings for them to generate their awareness on issues related to women’s land and property rights on one hand and to create a certain preparedness within them to work in groups and reap the benefits collectively, in the process benefitting individual families. Legal assistance has also been provided to women in cases of violence they face in terms of accessing land & property through the mechanism if ‘lok adalat’ that fights cases at village levels free of cost.
To grow the initiative we need to take the following steps:
STEP 1:
Advocacy with government at local, state and national level on change in land policy in order to ascertain more rights to women, especially of the landless community.
STEP 2:
Networking with other groups locally and nationally to build up a strong movement for women’s land and property rights.
STEP 3:
Documenting the entire process, bringing out case studies that would help in the advocacy effort and to ascertain the importance of the work.
Results: Describe the expected results of these actions over the next three years. Please address each year separately, if possible
Expected outcome we look forward to is the incorporation of the issue of ‘joint patta’ for women in the land policy of the country such that the self help groups can move towards independent standing and increased access to land and control over resources. Developing a movement whereby the interrelations between the issue of right over land and property, gender and violence against women can be addressed more holistically. Documenting the success stories would be an added impetus.
Success in Year 1:
So far though women’s group has been undertaking joint cultivation, entitlements are being issued in individual names of women, depending on the economic status of the families as per government records. Advocating for ‘group patta’ with the government is an issue that we would want to take up at this level. Also the implementation of the forest act whereby tribal women would be entitled to get land from the government is another issue that we are working with.
Success in Year 2:
The government has a scheme of NREGA, whereby they are offering women and men 100 days of work at the government determined wage level. So far in most of the villages the government has failed to implement this work, especially for women and the major excuse has been women cannot do many works that government can allocate at this moment. So we look forward to merging our work with the NREGA scheme, such that women working round the year on the lands fall within the 100 days of work and thus the accredited money be given to them.
Success in Year 3:
Complete formation of the seed bank, nursery and grain golas where by they would be mutually feeding each other and women and their families benefitting from the sustained produce in the long run. The ensured food security and an increased income level for women , increased and improved life style would be a marker of success.
How many people will your project serve annually?
Menos de 100
What is the average monthly household income in your target community, in US Dollars?
Less than $50
Does your innovation seek to have an impact on public policy?
Sí
If your innovation seeks to impact public policy, how?
Lobbying state & national government to incorporate issue of ‘group patta’ within land policy
Sustenibilidad
¿En qué fase está el proyecto?
Operando entre 1-5 años
Does your organization have a board of directors or an advisory board?
No
Does your organization have a non monetary partnerships with NGOs?
Sí
Does your organization have a non monetary partnerships with businesses?
No
Does your organization have a non monetary partnerships with government?
Sí
Please tell us more about how partnerships could be critical to the success of your innovation
Some examples: a) I am a judge on local government Lok Adalats (People's Courts) and use these courts for seeing justice for violence against women and land rights issues for women. (b) We also work with central government ministries such as Land and Land Reforms department to lobby for policy changes. (c) We work with Ministry of Panchayati Raj on issues dealing with land distribution for women.
We would like to learn more about how your initiative is financially supported. Please explain your business plan/revenue model
Approximately 250 words left (2000 characters).
La historia
What was the defining moment that led you to this innovation?
Working on the issue of violence against women at the grassroots level generated the understanding that women’s status within the family and community as a whole will not improve without their access to and control over resources. Agriculture being a primary means of livelihood in the villages and women already working in different aspects of it, it was felt that if women could be given access to land and to the produce from the land, they would in a way have a better standing in the family as well as the community. Women in poor families have always been involved in the process of earning in whatever ways they can to sustain families. In the dry lands of Bankura, mostly women have been working in the stone-crushers as daily wage labourers where they face rampant wage differential and sexual abuse. All these led to the thought that if the women’s group could be given land and their capacities developed to generate income and produce from the land, then these problems could be addressed. This would also in a way indirectly impact women’s health and children’s health in the families through increased nutrition level. This would ascertain a process of thinking of women’s development in a holistic manner.
Tell us about the person—the social innovator—behind this idea.
Sikha Roy has been the principal member behind this idea. With a post graduation in Political Science, she has done her masters in social work from the Vidyasagar University in west Bengal. She started her career by working in a NGO in Kolkata where she was responsible at looking at sustainable agriculture and food security of families at the grassroots level. Her work brought her in close interaction with women from the communities and she felt that this issue cannot be addressed without taking up the cause of women separately and that the overall societal development cannot be addressed holistically without addressing gender differentials and violence against women there off. This led her to work independently on the issue whereby she extended her work of sustainable agriculture and food security to women and thus working on women’s land and property rights, fighting the systemic oppression of women at the societal level became her primary concern.
How did you first hear about Changemakers?
Email from Changemakers
If through another source, please provide the information
ICRW
Does your project address any of the following barriers to women’s technology access and use?
Women’s time poverty, Social norms, Economic or institutional constraints.
If you checked any of the boxes above, please explain how.
Approximately 250 words left (2000 characters).
Does your project involve women in one or more of the following stages of the technology lifecycle? Identification of the problem the technology will solve:
Technology design.
If you checked any of the boxes above, please explain how you will ensure women’s involvement in each relevant phase of the technology lifecycle.
We consider the production of nurseries, grain golas and other techniques to fall under agricultural technology design.
If women are a focus of your project, how did this focus evolve?
The project focused on women from its conception..
Which type of women will your project reach directly?
Rural, Low income.
In what ways does your project team/leadership involve women?
It is led by a woman/women., It is led by a woman/women from a developing country., The core project team includes women., The core project team includes women from developing countries..
Has your organization formed any new partnerships in response to this challenge? If so, with what type/s of organization/s?
Has your project leadership had prior experience with the following?
Working with women.
- Ingresar para publicar nuevo contenio en este foro.