Organisation which helped women win land rights in villages awarded

Five village-level organizations working on water management, social issues and strengthening agriculture have been awarded the Anil Shah Gram Sangathan award. The award is given by the Development Support Centre in honour of its founder Anil Shah, who was also a former bureaucrat who worked for the upliftment of village.

One of the organizations that won the award in the social development category is the Bavla Mahila Vikas Sangathan from Bavla in Ahmedabad. Among its list of achievement is carrying out a campaign to ensure that women also get land rights. "Usually in villages, daughters and wives do not have the land in their names. It is usually in the name of the man in the family. Through our efforts we have managed to ensure that at least 600 women have landed in their name too," said Jasiben Rathod of the Sangathan. The organization that has 1100 women members also manages to generate a small profit of Rs 1 lakh a year from its Rs10 lakh income.

The Grameen Mahila Vikas Sanghi in Mangrol in Junagadh was awarded for among other things for its work to bring clean water to many of the villages that suffer from salinity ingress. "We have also managed to make 5 villages open defecation free by offering monetary help to women members who wanted to build toilets," said Manjulaben Vadher one of the members. The members through collective action also managed to get back 250 acre of gauchar land that the sarpanch had fraudulently sold to a cement company.