NRLP Implications on gender and equity Seema Kulkarni SOPPECOM, Pune

Key features of NRLP Thrust is clearly in favour of the landless and poor and the focus is on state owned lands Land use plans Assignment of lands to the landless Land pools, time boundedness, surplus ceilings Protection of lands belonging to SC/ST and other marginalised groups (review of laws, avoiding distress sales..) Establishing/protecting lands belonging to STs and nomads Land Banks

Land rights to women All government lands to be in the name of women and not as joint titles Group titles to women Granting of usufruct rights to women Review of 2005 HSAA States to promulgate laws or introduce Gos mandating joint registration All women committee at Panchayat level for CPLR management

Is the policy really mandated to do fulfil its wish list? Land as we all know is a state subject with several of its own laws on ceiling, fragmentation, rehabilitation Policy needs to elaborate this in greater detail

Need to resolve contradictions Land use plans to be prepared by whom Land pools and land banks ‘Encroachments’ on government lands (dalits, SC/STs Land to be in the name of women or joint? Personal laws, policies and Gos/GRs (experiences from Maharashtra)

Implementation State land rights commission Land Reforms Unit mechanism under the Department of Land Resources to monitor bi-annual meeting of the State Revenue Ministers specially held to review progress

What needs to be done Policy is progressive but only recommendatory in nature How will it intervene in state related land laws needs to be charted out Can a possibility of an overarching framework law on land reforms be thought of –similar to the effort in the water sector Without being centralising can it introduce some minimum principles of justice as binding on the states in land allocations and use

Women and land rights When we speak of land rights it would be important to separate a) family owned land under the purview of personal laws/customary laws b) state owned/community land

Family owned land Agricultural census shows the % share of female operational holdings increased from in to in however not necessarily under favourable conditions Experience shows women are coerced into writing off their rights- several examples across the country Study done by Women and Law centre of Law College Pune shows that in 10 years of amendment in Maharashtra not a single case was heard in the court

Law is necessary but not sufficient Several state laws such as land fragmentation are projected as an impediment in implementation of personal laws Stronger mechanisms for implementation of HSAA and all other personal and customary laws State machinery to invest in its implementation- making procedures easy, raising awareness, incentives etc

State lands Several uncertainties- dalit lands, lands given to single women as homesteads issues of ownership and inheritance The policy focusses on redistribution of state lands to the landless and the poor There is a need to bring assessment of lands and its current use under a legal framework

Land rights for single women