Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik distributed homestead pattas to 57 single homesteadless women at Hinjili tehsil on Wednesday through the Women Support Centre Programme implemented in Ganjam with support from landesa (Rural Development Institute), a globally recognised non-profit organisation working for securing land rights of the poor.
“The objective of the programme is to establish an institutional framework to protect the land rights of single women. It has introduced a ‘participatory women-focus enumeration method’ that uses
Anganwadi workers to count the ‘uncounted’ single women – the widowed, abandoned, divorcees, differently-able and unmarried women who live with their family or extended family- as family units,” said the district Collector of Ganjam.
As per the official sources, the programme has developed a computerised Management Information System (MIS) to create a master database of all single women at tehsil level and filters data to facilitate land and social security services from the Tehsil and Block Development office respectively. Unique Access Codes have been assigned to both the offices for accessing soft-data for processing service delivery and updating data. Revenue officials have been oriented to prioritise the cases of single women and ensure that each and every single woman is identified and included in the programme.
“We are glad that District Administrations of Ganjam, Mayurbhanj, Koraput, and Kalahandi have prioritised land allocation to single women through the Women Support Centre program and there are 76 centres now operating – one from each tehsil office. The programme has been an exemplary model in reaching out to those ‘invisible’ single-women who account 12 per cent of rural women population and would, perhaps, have never been identified and visible.” mentioned landesa State Director Sibabrata Choudhury.
Odisha has to go a long way as only 3.3 per cent of land is owned by women- claims a World Bank study on Gender Inclusive land Governance in Odisha.