Women farmers must be at forefront of policymaking: RSS leader Ramlal

RSS leader Ramlal described the Bharatiya Kisan Sangh’s first national women farmers’ conference as both a manifestation of women’s empowerment in Indian agriculture and a call to restructure agricultural policies.

RSS All-India contact chief (Sampark Pramukh) Ramlal said 5,000 women farmers and office-bearers from across the country, including Arunachal Pradesh and Manipur, travelled to Delhi at their own expense to attend the All India Women Farmers’ Workers Conclave at the Indira Gandhi Indoor Stadium here on Wednesday.

Ramlal, who attended the conference, said women farmers must be placed at the forefront of decision-making when India talks about sustainable agriculture and a prosperous rural economy.

“They must be given legal and social recognition not merely as a workforce labouring on the land, but as farmers and agricultural entrepreneurs capable of making independent decisions with self-reliance and discernment,” he said in a statement.

He congratulated the Bharatiya Kisan Sangh for focusing on women’s empowerment and urged other organisations to learn from such initiatives.

“These women, who travelled to Delhi at their own expense and raised the slogan, ‘We, the women of India, will bring prosperity’, have given the term Annadata (food provider) a new sense of pride and dignity and have set in motion what could become a historic transformation towards a disease-free and prosperous future for the country,” Ramlal said.

He said women have historically played a major role in Indian agriculture, undertaking work ranging from sowing and harvesting to preserving indigenous seeds and rearing livestock.

“Women undertake nearly 60 to 70 per cent of the physical labour associated with agriculture. Despite this, they have often been viewed in the social structure and Government records merely as ‘agricultural labourers’ or as family helpers,” he said.

Ramlal said the conference was organised under the guidance of the women’s wing of the Bharatiya Kisan Sangh to change this perception and give women farmers their rightful identity, dignity and self-respect. “Organised against the backdrop of the United Nations-declared ‘International Year of the Woman Farmer 2026’, the conference was not merely an organisational meeting but a manifestation of the empowerment of women in Indian agriculture and a new call for restructuring agricultural policies,” he said.

Ramlal said the conference discussed the role of traditional agriculture in achieving the vision of a developed and healthy India by 2047, with Gau-Krishi-Vanijyam (cattle, agriculture and commerce) forming part of the discussions.

Opposition to genetically modified (GM) seeds and gene-editing technology was also a key issue, he said. The conference identified five major pillars — toxin-free farming and cow-based organic agriculture, nutritious food, disease-free living, an addiction-free society and remunerative prices for agricultural produce, the RSS leader said.

He said the Centre and State Governments should place women farmers at the centre of their policies and tailor schemes to their needs, with easy access to credit, local processing units, and marketing of organic products. “Existing policies often revolve around corporate and chemical-based farming, whereas the ground reality is that the success of rural development lies in the hands of women’s power,” he said.