Land rights for women have multiplier effect: Roy Prosterman

For his work of over 40 years as a tireless campaigner for democratic land reform as an instrument of poverty alleviation in developing economies, Roy Prosterman, founder of the Rural Development Institute (RDI), is acknowledged as a ‘Champion of the World’s Poor’.

Working with governments, including in India, to design and implement laws, policies and programmes, the RDI has provided secure land rights to more than 100 million families in over 40 countries.

In an interview to DNA, Prosterman, who has twice been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize, explains how a redesign of the traditional land reform model in India — to give ‘micro-plots’, rather than full-size farms to the rural landless — might be the key to successful rural development.

Why are land rights for the poor important?
Half or more of the world’s population still makes a large part of its livelihood directly from farmland. The relationship that
people have to those lands — their land rights — is fundamentally important to their nutrition, income, status and security. In India, there are programmes under which landless families in Karnataka, West Bengal, Orissa and elsewhere are given a tenth of an acre of house-and-garden plots. Families that receive such plots will, even before they talk about nutritional and income benefits, mention
‘status’ or some form of empowerment that derives from land rights.

The same is the case for the status of women when the patta (title) is given in the name of the husband and wife — and in some cases the wife alone. From all indications, it has a whole range of positive impacts.

Has land ownership demonstrably lifted large masses of people out of poverty?
It’s moved them several rungs up the
ladder out of poverty, but not necessarily all the way. They are better off than they were before, and it gives them the biggest boost they’ve ever had.

It gets their nutritional levels within the range of basic needs, and substantially increases their incomes. A fairly extensive survey in Karnataka of families that received ‘microplots’ (which are a tenth or a fifteenth of an acre) revealed that the average family was able to meet all its vegetable needs, most of its fruit needs — and most of its dairy needs — because they would save to acquire a cow. Additionally, the sale of surplus yielded an income equivalent to about $200 a year, which is how much a farm worker would earn in a year.

Which countries have the best record in land reforms?
The three great post-war examples in Asia are Japan, Taiwan and South Korea, all of which had comprehensive land-to-the-tiller programmes. In Taiwan, in the 10 years following the programme, rice production went up 60%, and farm incomes by 150%. When people had the security of having their own land, they could make a variety of improvements and diversify.

In each of the countries, implementation was the key: all three were under some form of authoritarian government, and they decided they wanted to give land ownership to tenant farmers because it was essential for economic development and political stability.

What holds up similar reforms in India?
One of the reasons for the consistent failure of land reforms in most states in
India and elsewhere is that policymakers initially wanted to give full-sized farms (of about three or four acres) to all non-land owning households. But in a state like Maharashtra, that would have needed 30% of all arable land, and they couldn’t afford to pay anything close to market price. So they resort to quasi-confiscatory programmes.

How can you change things? Well, you can turn a confiscatory programme into a market-based one if you can redesign it so you don’t need 30% of arable land. If you gave just one-tenth of an acre as house-and-garden plots to all landless households in rural India, you’d require less than 1% of the arable land, so you can afford to buy the land. Market-based land reform is impossible if you need 30% of the land, but quite possible if you need only 1-2% of the arable land. That 2% can secure long-term stability and reasonable prosperity of rural societies. It’s one of those situations where thinking outside the box is critical.

So, how has this micro-plot model worked in India?
One of the nicest things about the house-and-garden plot concept is that when the land is contiguous to the house, you can do valuable things on it that you might be fearful of doing on land that’s located farther away — such as animal husbandry and growing fruit trees.

Our surveys in Karnataka and West Bengal of families with no land other than a micro-plot showed they were remarkably effective.
The programme needs no additional legislation, it only needs government
resources: the wherewithal to acquire land.

The Central government is putting in Rs 1,000 crore for land acquisition, and has said it will match the funding provided by the state governments.

How does the women’s land rights programme work, and how has it helped?
For decades, the tendency in land reform work was to think of the family as a mysterious black box whose internal workings were not looked at. It was adequate to list the husband as the ‘Head of the Household’ in land title documents, and you assumed the benefits went to the family. You didn’t think of women’s rights. But for about a decade, we’ve been making sure that women’s land rights are addressed. 

In India, for instance, in all the house-and-garden micro-plots programmes, the wife’s name is at least jointly listed on the patta. And where it’s locally acceptable — and established as such by field work — the title is given in just the wife’s name. The result has been quite striking in terms of women’s empowerment and women’s control over food production, income and nutrition.

Globally, a given amount of income or food production in the wife’s control (rather than in the husband’s) has a much higher multiplier effect. It’s more likely to be used fully to improve kids’ nutrition, to send girls as well as boys to schools, and to get medical assistance to girls as well as boys. There’s also been one study (done elsewhere) to suggest that where the wife’s name is on the land title, there’s a sharp decline in domestic violence.

How was resistance overcome in patriarchal societies like India?
It doesn’t seem to have been a problem so far. When you’re giving incremental rights to land to people who haven’t any land rights yet, the husband recognises it’s a big benefit if it’s explained that the wife’s name is to go on the title. If you did that with existing land holdings, the response might be different.  In fact, we’re now working to empower daughters as well by having their names too on the title.