1) Smallholder Women Farmers in India: A Research Study

Agriculture in India is usually associated with images of male farmers on tractors or working on their fields with bullock-drawn ploughs. But there are startling facts that belie these popular images- for instance; women constitute 40 percent of the agricultural workforce, and this proportion is rising, according to the 2007 Report of the Sub-Group on Gender and Agriculture for the 11th Five Year Plan. The State of Food and Agriculture Report 2010-11 of the Food & Agriculture Organisation (FAO) shows that this is part of a global trend. Women make up on average 43 percent of the agricultural labour force in developing countries, ranging from 20 percent in Latin America to almost 50 percent in East and Southeast Asia and sub-Saharan Africa.

What ownership and control do smallholder women farmers in India have over key agriculture assets and resources like land, water, credit, and agricultural inputs? What constraints do they face in access to markets and marketing opportunities? What is their food and nutrition security? What is the impact of global and national market-related processes on them? What policies, programmes and investments do the Union and State Governments have for their development? These are some of the interesting questions that we explored in a desk study undertaken for Oxfam India on Smallholder Women Farmers in India.

A glimpse of some of the main findings of the study is provided below :

Feminisation of agriculture

About 85 percent of all rural women workers in India are in agriculture, according to the 2007 Report of the Sub-Group mentioned earlier. The 2001 Census showed that almost a third of all cultivators are women, and women also constitute over 46 percent of agricultural labourers. In states like Uttaranchal with high migration of men to the plains, over 56 percent of cultivators are women. With such a significant presence in agriculture, why do women and their work tend to be invisible? Feminist scholars say that women in agriculture in India operate in a transitional economy, where pre-capitalist modes of production co-exist with the modern market economy. Labour relations on the farm and within households are in the form of family conjugal obligation. The length of time spent on agriculture and household activities and volume of work done are very high, but these are under-valued as they are not market-based and are seen as part of women’s obligations. Women actively involved in agriculture may be under-counted as they may be misreported as `housewives’ or as `not working’.

But this situation is changing. A process of feminisation of agriculture is increasingly under way. As population increases and land holdings get fragmented, dependence on subsistence production becomes unviable. Women seek local wage labour opportunities and men migrate for wage labour or even desert women. Women of households that own some land cultivate and manage it along with other livelihood and domestic tasks. The process of feminisation is double-edged, particularly for smallholder women farmers. On the one hand, with low access to land, labour, and other means of production, they have low potential for market gains. This increases their work burden, leaving less time for domestic tasks and childcare. On the other hand, it also increases their access to social resources and decision-making opportunities. In agriculture, they acquire increased understanding and voice in the choice of crops, application of fertiliser, time to irrigate, hiring of labour, and investment in capital goods and inputs.

While almost a third of cultivators are women, less than 2 percent of women own land in India as a whole. The situation is much more variable when we look at smallholder women in different States. For example, the Agricultural Census of 2005 shows that in Orissa, under 3 percent of marginal holdings (1 hectare or less) are owned by women, whereas in Chhattisgarh, a little over 13 percentof marginal holdings are owned by women. Women’s access to land is largely through inheritance, and inheritance is governed largely by customs which are highly biased against women. States also have inheritance laws that vary according to region and religion. While these are better than customs, they are still biased against women. There is a large gap between women’s rights in law and disinheritance in practice, for example women `voluntarily’ surrendering their inherited share of land to their brothers in return for the security that the latter ostensibly provide them. And finally, even where women legally own land, there is a yawning gap between ownership and actual managerial control over the land.

A breakthrough Amendment in 2005 to the Hindu Succession Act brought Hindu women’s inheritance laws on agricultural land on par with men, overriding State laws that discriminated against women. The Amendment conferred daughters including married daughters, birthright over joint family property. A 1985 policy directive recommended that States give joint titles to husband and wife in transfer of assets like land and house sites through Government programmes. This has been implemented only in 9 States. In general, Government officials lack awareness of laws and policies pertaining to women’s land rights and seldom implement them.

The absence of land titles impacts access to agricultural credit for women farmers. Between 2004 and 2006, Reserve Bank of India statistics show that women received only 6 percent of direct agricultural credit. The absence of land titles as collateral is the main reason for poor access to credit.

Women’s role in agriculture and their own food security within the household is gendered. The process of feminisation of agriculture that is under way is leading to women working harder without getting higher returns. This effectively means that women have less time for childcare and inadequate income for quality diets. The excessive demands made on the time and energies of women, combined with poverty and discriminatory practices associated with rigid social norms result in their poor nutritional status.Based on the third National Family Health Survey (NFHS 3) data of 2005-06 and comparing it with the second survey (NFHS 2) of 1998-99, researchers Jose and Navaneetham found that almost 22 percent of women in India suffered from both anaemia and Chronic Energy Deficiency (CED)- a condition where the Body Mass Index (ratio of weight to squared height) is below 18.5, showing significant undernutrition. Almost 48 percent of women have either anaemia or CED. The situation is worse in some States, for example in Jharkhand and Bihar, almost 32 percent women have both CED and anaemia.

Government policies and programmes

Over the last decade, a number of Government-appointed Committees have studied the problems of women in agriculture. For the formulation of the Eleventh Plan, the Sub-Group on Gender and Agriculture and the Working Group on Agricultural Extension went into issues in depth. So did the National Commission on Farmers, the Programme for Small and Marginal Farmers suggested by the National Commission on Enterprises in the Unorganised Sector (NCEUS), the Draft Policy on Women in Agriculture by the National Commission for Women, and the Committee on State Agrarian Relations and the Unfinished Task in Land Reforms. All these Committees have repeatedly recommended a number of measures to support women farmers, for example, joint titles on land, incentives for group farming, enhanced access to credit, access to water and role in water management, access to common pool resources, women-focussed extension and capacity building, support services for health and childcare, and gender audit of programmes and schemes in agriculture and rural development. Most of these recommendations are also to be found in the National Policy for Farmers, 2007. However, very little is known about the status of implementation of these recommendations and it can be safely surmised that little is happening by way of implementation.

There has been an evolution in policy approaches towards gender in agriculture since the Sixth Plan. The present approach of the Ministry of Agriculture is one of `gender mainstreaming’, which means that women have to be part of all the schemes/programmes of the agriculture sector. The components of gender mainstreaming in agriculture are women’s empowerment, capacity building, and access to inputs as well as technology and resources. However, the measures for gender mainstreaming tend to be compartmentalized across different Departments under the Ministry. The National Gender Resource Centre in Agriculture has the mandate of gender mainstreaming. It has however been criticised for its narrow focus and lack of engagement with the larger framework of agrarian change, like the decline of common pool resources leading to increased women’s labour, and cropping pattern changes impacting women adversely.

An example of its narrow focus is the Ministry of Agriculture’s approach to technology as a means to increase productivity. This translates into an instrumental approach to women- how women can contribute to agricultural productivity and production. The effort is entirely on `women-friendly’ tools and equipment, and technology for production activities considered being in women’s domain- for example, mushroom cultivation, aquaculture, and post-harvest processing. Initiatives on appropriate technologies and production programmes for women in isolation perpetuate the gender division of labour. At the same time, technology development without reference to its gender impact (as in the case of Green Revolution technologies) leads to displacement of women’s labour. There are many technology-based development departments like agriculture, horticulture, sericulture, fisheries, animal husbandry, agricultural engineering, and forestry. There is very little co-ordinated effort in technology development and extension between these departments. At the same time, there is also a lack of convergence between these technology-based development departments and rural development programmes.

The Outcome Budget 2009-10 of the Ministry of Agriculture reported that the Women Component Plan (WCP) has been introduced to ensure 30 percent allocation of resources/benefits to women under all Beneficiary Oriented Schemes. However data on compliance with targeted assistance to women by different Departments of the Ministry of Agriculture and on the quality of outcomes is non-existent or very scanty. Where compliance is reported, the numbers of beneficiaries reached are very small. There are substantial gaps in women’s access to markets, credit and technology under the Schemes reported. The MahilaKisanSashaktikaranPariyojana has been announced as a sub-component of the recently launched National Rural Livelihoods Mission. The Pariyojana guidelines suggest a strong focus on production by women farmers and a much weaker focus on empowerment aspects.

Potential areas for intervention

Our study suggested a number of broad areas for intervention :