Charter of Demands

Gender-Disaggregated Data Base: All State Governments must initiate efforts to develop and maintain a gender disaggregated data base consisting of extent of land holdings (both public/assigned lands and private lands) by women across various castes, communities etc. This initiative must include recording women’s names in all relevant land records from the village level upwards such as in the cultivation records or Pahani along with their spouse’s name (where relevant), in the combined land revenue records (jamabandi records) as well as verifying Women’s rights in all cases of inheritance, whenever land titles are issued under the RoR Act etc. This exercise must be taken up and completed within a time-bound manner of 2 years and continuously updated. There is a need for advocacy with the Central Government (DoLR) to issue specific directions and clear guidelines to all State Governments to take up this exercise. Also, advocacy with State Governments to issue relevant Government orders to give effect to this exercise.

Prioritizing Landless Women in Public Land Distribution: All categories of landless single women, especially from SC, ST sections (including those from farm suicide affected households, liberated manual scavengers etc) must be enumerated and prioritised in various kinds of public land distribution initiatives of the State Governments. Enumeration of landless women must also be taken up in a time bound manner not exceeding 2 years and regularly updated.

Clear, Inalienable rights, including Succession Rights: Women beneficiaries or assignees in public land distribution programmes must be given clear, secure rights to lands assigned. In addition, there must be specific clauses in the title deed preventing alienation of the same lands assigned to these women for any other public purpose in future as well as succession rights which state that in the event of the women beneficiary’s death, the rights to the assigned land would be passed on to other eligible women in the household. Advocacy to get all State Governments to amend their relevant legislations related to public land in view of the above demands.

Land Purchase and Land Lease: All State Tenancy laws must be reviewed and suitably amended to allow leasing of all unused, potentially cultivable lands (endowment lands, ponds, water bodies, canal embankments, inland fisheries rights etc) to landless women’s groups while recognizing such groups (SHGs, JLG, cooperative, other collectives) as a valid category of landowners. The period of lease must be at least for a period of 10 years to begin with and to be revised for the same or longer period thereafter. All such landless women’s groups must be enumerated and given Loan Eligibility Cards (LEC) for accessing credit as well as other support systems to sustainably carry out farming activities. A similar group approach must be adopted in land purchase initiatives of the Governments in various States.

Support Systems for Cultivation: Following land distribution, women beneficiaries who are often first generation farmers from marginalized SC and ST sections must be supported (whether individually or in groups) to carry out farming in a sustainable manner through provision of subsidized inputs, credit facilities, technology, protective irrigation, post harvesting processes and support for marketing their produce. MGNREGS and other government programmes must to be aligned for development of public lands assigned or leased out to women. State Governments must issue clear and specific guidelines in the form of relevant GO/GR in this regard.

Recruitment and Training of Personnel: At least 50% women personnel should be inducted at all levels into the State revenue departments, including the cadre of existing or potential legal extension/outreach workers, while Gender sensitization programmes must be made mandatory for all these revenue officials.. Appropriate gender sensitization programmes must be designed and provided to revenue officials at all levels through collaboration with the National Rural Livelihood Mission, institutions like NALSAR, Judicial academy, as well as by drawing upon the expertise of relevant civil society organisations and NGOs etc.

Women Resource Cells: A single window system in the form of ‘Women Resource Cell’ should be created from the mandal/block level upwards in the revenue departments in all States that aims to  address and resolve all land issues related to women in a time bound manner. The mandate of these resource cells must also include research, monitoring and evaluation in order to assess the progress of various interventions as well as to provide continuous feedback to address systemic and programmatic issues on a regular basis.

Legal Literacy and Awareness: All State Governments’ should take steps to spread legal literacy related to land issues amongst women, especially from Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes and other marginalised (as per recommendations of the Draft National Land Reforms Policy and Advisory issued by Ministry of Rural Development, Government of India) while ensuring that women benefit from targeted and accessible legal literacy campaigns and programmes to help them understand their rights to land and entitlements, and where to claim them (National Commission for Women’s Expert Committee on Gender and Land rights). Governments must also aim at Legal simplification and standardization of legal literacy campaigns targeting the poor, especially women (as per suggestions of the Report of the Commission of Legal Empowerment of the Poor).

Unused land available with government, Railways, irrigation department, canals highway department to be allotted to women farmer collectives for agriculture development and livelihood promotion.

Convert cultivable fallows into food production farms including millet, under women farmer leadership to produce millet, pulses, other food crops and fodder.

• Need for legal provisioning
• Land and Property Succession Acts for women should be gender just for all women irrespective of caste, creed, community and status.
• As a policy, automatically include names of married women at the time of marriage, into the land title of husband as joint owners, except in the case of matrilineal communities.
• The provision should be such that in the case of a married woman, after a husband’s death, his name should be struck from the land records and the
• Gram Panchayat should be responsible to see that wife’s name automatically replaces the husband’s name.
• In Succession Acts, the provision should be such that upon the death of the husband, the land and property gets registered in the name of the wife.
• At the time of her death, the land and property is divided equally amongst the sons and daughters. If she remarries, at the time of remarriage, the land and property are divided equally amongst the children and she remains the owner of an equal share of the divided land.
• Create barriers to daughters / sisters / widows releasing their title deeds: Make procedural Changes and Guidelines which must be enforced so that they do not give away their rights to the father’s / brother’s / husband’s land due to social pressure. Any/all of the following provisions, must be written into laws and/or rules:
• When a daughter inherits land, any application for giving away this right should be considered only after one year of such application for gift transfer and after both the brother and sister have had a counselling session with the at the Taluka level, with a trained counsellor.
• In case the brother wishes to own land before one year, he has to purchase this land at market rate from the sister and deposit money in her account, before any transfer can be made.
• He can enter into a registered lease deed for a stipulated period after appropriate payments are made and recorded.
• A widow’s land can’t directly be transferred by force or will to others till she is alive, and any such transfer of widow’s land should require Collector’s permission.

• When a matter with respect to land and property is sub-judice, the court should reserve its right to permit the concerned victim woman to exercise her right and use the disputed land/property to earn her livelihood till the final disposal of the suit.
  Fast track all cases of women’s land ownership disputes within a time period of 3 months.
• When a single woman files a title suit for possession over land and property, the act/provision should be such that: Such cases should be decided in the fast track courts.
• The incurred cost/expenses and court fee should be reduced to a minimum.
• In the absence of the disputing opposite parties/respondents, the suit must be heard ex-parte and decided in favor of the single woman/appellant.
• The final order be compiled and the possession and protection of the property be conferred upon her.
• Have at least one-third women signing as Panchs’ as references /co-witnesses, required to completing the land documents. They could be heads of SHGs, formally elected women representatives or any woman representing committees promoted by Government at the village level.

All existing laws related to land assignment, land ceiling, tenancy etc. along with the large body of revenue statutes must be reviewed from a gender perspective and suitable amendments must be made in favor of women, wherever relevant.

• Recording and Verifying Women’s land Rights: Women’s names must be recorded in all relevant land records from the village level upwards such as in cultivator column in the 1B register or Pahani along with their husbands name, in the land revenue records (jamabandi records) etc.
  
  
• Women’s rights should be verified in all cases of inheritance, whenever land titles are issued under the Record of Rights Act (ROR). 
  
  
• Women having land rights should be issued pattadar passbooks, title deeds etc.
  
  
• Issue Individual land titles (land records) for all women coparceners during the time of mutation by measuring and surveying the land.
  
  
• Efforts must be directed on verifying and recording women’s land rights as part of the re-survey of lands in Telangana State, scheduled to be taken up by the Government from January 2015.

• Ask  the States  to create schemes,  with inducements to encourage men  to promote joint ownership with their wives, as well as transfer lands to women’s names
  
  
• Have a policy of differential incentive for women land owners in agriculture/horticulture  schemes to motivate transfer of land to women in the family
  
  
• Additional benefits to Farmer Producer Organizations (FPOs) of exclusively women members (Tax reduction/subsidy/exemption in registration fees, ex current Chief Minister of Gujarat announces special benefit to women dairy farmers)  
  
  
• Under Present Program of SFAC (Small Farmers’ Agri-Business Consortiums), Equity Grants are proposed for all the eligible FPOs. In this situation special leverage should be given to women FPOs.
  
  
• Waive stamp duty for purchase of land, or transfer of property, exclusively in the name of women to motivate men to transfer / purchase land in the name of women.

• Relevant government departments should issue suitable directions to facilitate implementation of Panchayat (Extension to Scheduled Areas) Act (PESA) in states.
• Tribal development department should be strengthened to support the local communities in claiming their rights over community forests, and provide help to single women and women headed families in getting titles over their individual land.
• Ownership of forest, land and other resources for single women and for women headed families should be recognized as a priority under FRA and cleared in a time bound manner. Such land must be developed with support of MGNREGA and ecological farming must be promoted in convergence with horticulture and agriculture department. In Orissa, the land recognition under FRA and MO JAMI Mo GHARA DIHA must be in the name of women instead of her husband/spouse.
• Women’s participation should be ensured in the Forest Rights Committee and Forest Management Committees. Women elected representatives should be involved in enhancing women’s participation in villages where Community Forest Rights (CFR) titles have been awarded.
• Government should develop aManagement Information Systems (MIS) like the one for MGNREGS to track the status of implementation of FRA. The MIS should contain gender disaggregated data.
• Funds should be allocated under MGNREGA to Gram Sabhas to allow them to formulate and implement forest management plans under women’s leadership.
• The criteria of 75 years residence for other forest dwellers to claim individual rights under FRA should be reviewed.
• Denial of rights of other forest dwellers under recently issued guidelines by MoEF must be stopped. They have to be given ownership rights over the forest land.
• Gram Sabha Consent must be mandatory to take up any projects which effect village forests’.

• Women in the forest areas are most affected due to forcible displacement in the name of development. Consequent to such displacement, women face loss of livelihood and become increasingly vulnerable to ill health, trafficking and loose educational opportunities. Forcible displacement should be stopped in order to protect the dignity of women.
• An urgent survey is required to assess the ground situation related to displacement due to conflict situation across the country. There is a real danger of Fifth Schedule areas becoming general areas due to large scale displacement of adivasis for various reasons. Active resettlement efforts should be taken up to ensure that entire communities and women feel safe in coming back to their habitations. Efforts must be made to restore livelihoods. Further those areas which should have been rightly declared as Fifth Schedule areas with long pending struggles being waged for the same, should be declared so.
• Specific guidelines should be formulated to ensure that women farmers consent is taken separately as in cases of land acquisition. Further women’s concerns and needs must be separately recognized in compensation as well as R and R processes.
• In cases where communities agree to displacement, the resettlement and rehabilitation process should ensure that the entire community is rehabilitated in one location and that the social fabric and livelihoods of the community are not destroyed.
• Special efforts must be made towards restoring lands belonging to women as part of the larger struggle to restore lands illegally alienated from tribals to non tribals. A Special Commission must be set up for speedy clearance of the above cases in time bound manner.
• Resettlement of all the tribal and forest dependent communities displaced by development projects in the last 50 years should be completed.

• Equal and living wages (incl. basic lifestyle expenses) have to be laid down and ensured for women agriculture laborers by recognizing them as skilled workers.
• Protective labor laws should be implemented, including for immigrant laborers and inter-state migrant laborers. There should be universalization of maternity benefits and other social security support.
• All labor-displacing technologies (heavy machines, herbicides etc.) should be minimized and stopped from being promoted in any way, while drudgery reducing technologies and mechanisms like tool banks and custom hiring centers should be set up.

• Women play a critical role in livestock rearing. Landless and small and marginal land holder women are dependent on livestock as a major source of livelihood. 70-80% of day to day work in dairying, sheep and goat rearing and back yard poultry is carried out by women, in backyard poultry it is almost 100% carried out women only.
• Women who are targeted as beneficiaries of loans for dairy animals, sheep and goat and poultry through government schemes should be given the choice of buying breeds suitable to their resources and climatic conditions. Women should not be pressurized to buy unsuitable cattle.  The pricing of milk should be remunerative covering the cost of milk production and a percentage of profit.
• Backyard poultry rearing by women must be encouraged and supported instead of granting all the subsidies to commercial poultry farms. Necessary budgets to be allotted for this.
• Women livestock rearers’ cooperatives to be promoted and all necessary  support systems to be extended to them.
• Grazing lands under occupation must be surveyed and handed over to the panchayats so that women dependent on livestock rearing can benefit.
• Livestock development policy and schemes should be gender sensitive, information to be provide to women livestock rearers.

• Fisherwomen should be given lease rights on at least 50% ponds, water bodies and inland fisheries with collective control on resources.
• Fisher-women to have equal membership at all levels including governance bodies in fisher cooperatives.
• Customary rights to grounds for drying fish that fisher-women have, have to be respected and upheld/protected.
• Fisher women should have their right to access fish in the harbors for sale.
• Fisher-women should have a right to use public transport to reach the markets.
• Fisher-women should have facilities for storage of goods at harbors and markets.
• Cultural taboos on women’s use of fishing boats and other equipment should be addressed – systematic skill building of fisher-women to engage in activities like fishing (fish harvesting) should be invested upon.
• Any skill testing criteria for allocating of lease rights on water bodies which inadvertently keep out women should be removed.