Women farmers are fighting against all odds
The State should reorient its policies — whether related to asset transfers or wages — to serve their interests
Every year, the government celebrates Mahila Kisan Divas. What does it mean for a majority of rural women engaged in farming? Statistical estimates of women’s work participation in agriculture vary, from 60-80%.
The National Policy for Farmers, 2007, defines a farmer as any “person actively engaged in the economic and/or livelihood activity of growing crops and producing other primary agricultural commodities”. So, most rural women would qualify as ‘farmers’, though often classified as ‘unpaid family helpers’. Our research in Odisha and Maharashtra reveals that women perform almost the same amount of work as men in the peak seasons of planting and harvesting, apart from managing domestic work. This is a significant point, as the government’s Time Use Survey, 1999, showed that while women perform more than 50% of total activities, they spend roughly half the time as their men on ‘productive’ work. There is also likely to have been a shift over the past two decades, with women’s contributions increasing since their men have no option but to migrate seasonally to ensure their family’s survival.
In tribal-dominated districts, whether Koraput in Odisha or Dumka in Jharkhand, while women don’t have legal titles to land, plots of land, particularly the dongar or bari (uplands), are socially recognised as women’s plots. Women control the choice of crops and the output. Yet corporate interventions, especially the spread of eucalyptus plantations for the paper industry, across central and eastern India, as well as new legislation such as the Compensatory Afforestation Fund Act 2016 , which displaces women farmers from their upland plots, are threatening not just their livelihoods but equally their status as farmers.
Deprived of their socially recognised plots of land, women are not entitled to extension services, credit, or membership in farmer cooperatives. Their labour is considered ‘free’, and not valued in calculating the ‘costs of production’. Crops whose production is controlled by women, such as millets, pulses and vegetables, are not considered for minimum support price or for public procurement. While incentives galore are provided to private industry for their growth and development, it is forgotten that women farmers constitute the largest ‘private sector’ in the country. They receive no support or incentives whatsoever, yet battle on against all odds. We need to move from rhetoric to practice in truly recognising women as farmers and reorienting policies, whether on asset transfers, or wage and pricing policies, to serve their interests.