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Building the movement for women’s land rights
Localização
Basic idea is to make the vested lands available to women’s group, give them their due entitlement. Along with the entitlement get the land cultivated by the groups in order to secure their nutrition and livelihood. Plans to make seed banks, nursery, grain golas are also there to ensure sustainability.
Sobre Você
Localização
Project Street Address
3/10, Guru Nanak Road
Project City
Durgapur
Project Province/State
District; Burdwan, West Bengal, I
Project Postal/Zip Code
713204
Project Country
Índia
Sua ideia
Country your work focuses on:
India.
Website URL
YouTube Upload
Em que estágio está seu projeto?
Operating for 1-5 years
What is the average monthly household income in your target community, in US Dollars?
<$50
Dê um nome ao seu projeto
Building the movement for women’s land rights
Describe Your Idea
Basic idea is to make the vested lands available to women’s group, give them their due entitlement. Along with the entitlement get the land cultivated by the groups in order to secure their nutrition and livelihood. Plans to make seed banks, nursery, grain golas are also there to ensure sustainability.
INOVAÇÃO
Describe your idea in fewer than 50 words.
Basic idea is to make the vested lands available to women’s group, give them their due entitlement. Along with the entitlement get the land cultivated by the groups in order to secure their nutrition and livelihood. Plans to make seed banks, nursery, grain golas are also there to ensure sustainability.
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.
What is your area of work? (Please check as many as apply.)
What impact have you had?
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.
Describe the primary problem(s) that your project 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.
Describe the steps that your organization is taking to make your project successful.
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.
Impacto
What will it take for your project to be successful over the next three years? 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.
Do you have a business plan or strategic plan? (yes/no)
Yes. Lobbying state & national government to incorporate issue of ‘group patta’ within land policy
What are the three most important actions needed to grow your initiative or organization? 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.
What are the three most important actions needed to grow your initiative or organization? STEP 2:
Networking with other groups locally and nationally to build up a strong movement for women’s land and property rights.
What are the three most important actions needed to grow your initiative or organization? 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.
Describe the expected results of these actions.
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.
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 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?
From Ashoka Innovators for the Public
Temas relacionados à inscrição
SUSTENTABILIDADE
What would prevent your project from being a success?
Political intervention is a major concern area that would impediment the execution of the project because this cannot be achieved without the active participation of the government at local levels
Financing source
If yes, provide organization name.
This field has not been completed. (250 characters or less)
How long has this organization been operating? (i.e. less than a year; 1-5 years; more than 5 years)
1 – 5 years
Does your organization have a Board of Directors or an Advisory Board?
No
Does your organization have any non-monetary partnerships with NGOs? (yes/no)
Yes
Does your organization have any non-monetary partnerships with businesses? (yes/no)
No
A História
Does your organization have any non-monetary partnerships with government? (yes/no)
Yes
Please tell us more about how these partnerships are 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.
How many people will your project serve annually?
1001-10,000
What is the total number of employees and total number of volunteers at your organization?
Employee 4
Volunteers 10
What is your organization's business classification?
Non-profit/NGO/citizen sector organization
Have you received funding from any of the following groups? (Please check as many as apply.)
Ashoka .
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| Amelia Forrest Kaye updated this Competition Entry. - 941 dias atrás |
| Building the movement for women’s land rights has been chosen as a winner in Cultivating Innovation: Solutions for Rural Communities. - 942 dias atrás |
| Amelia Forrest Kaye updated this Competition Entry. - 961 dias atrás |
| Building the movement for women’s land rights has been chosen as a finalist in Cultivating Innovation: Solutions for Rural Communities. - 962 dias atrás |
