life was not easy for Urmila, a 45-year-old widow living in a remote village in Ganjam district, who lost her husband to HIV ten years back. She has, somehow, learnt to live all alone with her two small children without any support either from her parents or from her in-laws.
While she was struggling hard to manage her household, the cyclone Phailin completely devastated her by turning her small hut to a heap of earth and straws.
Though identified as a cyclone-affected family, the ex-gratia grant of `17, 000 Urmila has received from the Government to rebuild her house cannot put an end to her worries as she does not know where to build the new hut. The land she previously occupied was a Government land now allocated to the veterinary department. Confused and weary Urmila does not know where to go to start life afresh.
Urmila is not alone. Many landless people share the same plight. lack of secure land rights among the displaced is the main hindrance to house rebuilding efforts. Families without secure land rights prefer to remain in their homes even in natural calamities as they are afraid of not being allowed to return to their houses. They also do not build pucca houses as land is not under their ownership.
Secure title to land in disaster-prone coastal areas can ensure building of concrete houses acting as a shield against human causalities during calamities. The situation becomes worse in case of single women compelling them to live with her relatives, either on the parental side or in the in-laws’ family for socio-cultural reasons as they are not considered as a ‘family’ and, therefore, considered ineligible to get land as per law.
The State Government has launched the Vasundhara programme since 2005-06 after shocking survey results conducted by the Revenue Department in 2003 revealing the number of landless families as over 2.5 lakh in the State.
As per revenue laws, it is the family that is eligible to get land under the Government’s land distribution programmes. However, single women have always been at a disadvantage because they are considered as separate families when they live on their own and not with parents or in-laws. It is the male member, by virtue of being the head of the family, becomes eligible to get land.
Identification and distribution of pattas to such single women has been the first priority of NGOs like landesa working for land rights of women. After a study conducted in nine villages in three tehsils, landesa designed Women Support Centres (WSCs) as a pilot scheme in Khallikote tehsil of Ganjam district. The findings underlined the emergency of paying special attention to the land rights of single women.
In its initiatives towards this cause, landesa has organised many patta distribution drives in coordination with the Government. Recently, 331 pattas were distributed to single women and women-headed families through the WSCs in Bhanjanagar, Puroshattampur, Sheragada and Soroda tehsils in Ganjam district. Rural Development Minister Bikram Keshari Arukh distributed pattas to 219 single women in Bhanjanagar tehsil in March 2014. Earlier, in February 2014, another 103 single women in Sheragarda tehsil and nine women in Soroda tehsil had got land pattas.
Disparities in property rights and weak implementation of progressive laws are primarily responsible for multiple threats to the security of women’s lives and living. In a country like India where a rape occurs every 22 minutes, a dowry killing almost every 90 minutes and a female foeticide every 20 seconds, and with this, the country loses 10 million female births annually (Thomas, 2012), women are vulnerable. land becomes particularly critical for a woman when her husband migrates for work, abandons her, divorces her or dies.
As per a landesa estimation, providing homestead land, housing and livelihood support to a single window is likely to benefit more than half a million single women. Therefore, it is time for the Governments to consider widows and deserted and abandoned women, differently-abled and single unmarried women over the age of 30, independent of their parental and in-laws’ families as separate families to become eligible for land.
Bringing these women into the purview of a family would require a small and uncomplicated amendment to the Odisha Government land Settlement Act, 1962. The decision for scaling up would only require a Government resolution and no significant additional financial resources.