The question of women farmers’ legal rights in India is suspended between illusion and reality. As India approaches eight decades of independence, countless political projects and slogans have emerged in the name of “women’s empowerment.” Yet the unresolved question of land rights for women—particularly for the vast majority of rural women farmers—has remained buried beneath layers of social prejudice, political indifference, and institutional silence.
The roots of this silence lie deep within India’s parliamentary structure itself, where women’s representation has historically been kept deliberately limited and politically ineffective. Under the 73rd Constitutional Amendment, effective from 24 April 1993, India constitutionally guaranteed a minimum of 33 per cent reservation for women in Panchayats. Yet the very lawmakers who recognised the necessity of women’s participation in local governance failed to ensure equal political representation for women in Parliament and state assemblies.
Why?
Was it an attempt to define and restrict the boundaries of women’s political participation? Was it institutional contempt toward women’s legislative leadership? Or merely a historic oversight?
The answer is unequivocal: no. It was, and continues to be, a calculated effort to preserve a deeply entrenched patriarchal political order.
If Parliament itself could constitutionally mandate proportional representation for women in Panchayats, why should the same democratic principle not apply to Parliament and state assemblies? The truth is stark: the systematic exclusion of women from the centres of political power remains one of the greatest moral failures of modern democracy. The result has been incomplete laws, weak implementation, and generations of women denied substantive justice. It is here that the architecture of historical injustice against women was built.
In September 2023, Parliament passed the Nari Shakti Vandan Act (The 106th Constitutional Amendment Act, 2023), reserving 33 per cent of seats for women in the Lok Sabha and all state legislative assemblies. Embedded within this legislation was the possibility of creating a transformative institutional mandate—one capable not only of strengthening existing protections for women but also of introducing long-overdue laws for their social, political, and economic rights.
The Act officially came into force on 16 April 2026 and was to be implemented following delimitation. Yet, by allowing procedural disputes and political hesitation to overshadow its historic promise, Parliament squandered a rare opportunity for democratic redemption.
In truth, this legislation could have marked a decisive turning point in India’s political history. It could have opened the path toward genuine gender justice by enabling women to shape lawmaking itself rather than merely remain subjects of policy. It could have ensured stronger implementation of women-centric laws and created political momentum for long-denied reforms.
According to the World Bank Gender Data Portal (2021), only 9.5 per cent of women in India possess land ownership rights. This grim statistic exposes the harsh contradiction of 21st century India: while women sustain the nation’s agrarian economy through labour, they remain dispossessed of ownership, authority, and legal recognition.
A decisive political voice for women in Parliament and state assemblies could have fundamentally altered this reality. It could have secured justice for half the population who, despite constitutional promises of equality and property rights, continue to remain excluded from meaningful ownership of land and resources.
The Nari Shakti Vandan Act represented a historic opportunity to create that decisive voice—especially for women farmers—and to dismantle nearly 90 years of legal and institutional stagnation.
Even before independence, the Hindu Women’s Right to Property Act, 1937 granted Hindu widows a limited share in their husband’s property, equal to that of sons. Yet daughters were denied rights in ancestral property altogether. After independence, Articles 14 and 15 of the Indian Constitution established equality before the law and prohibited discrimination on the basis of sex, thereby affirming women’s legal right to own, inherit, and transfer property.
Later, Section 14 of the Hindu Succession Act, 1956 granted women absolute ownership over their property. However, daughters were still denied coparcenary rights in ancestral property by birth. More critically, Section 4(2) of the Act exempted agricultural land from its purview, leaving colonial-era land revenue laws—deeply patriarchal in nature—untouched.
This exclusion proved devastating.
Following the reorganisation of states in 1956, newly formed states introduced revised Land Revenue Codes and Laws. Yet amidst legal ambiguity and political indifference, no state undertook meaningful reform to secure land rights for women farmers. Instead, colonial land systems continued to consolidate male dominance over land ownership, effectively granting men near-exclusive control over agricultural property.
Thus, for millions of women farmers, land rights became yet another chapter in India’s long history of institutionalised injustice.
A significant breakthrough came in 2005 through the Hindu Succession (Amendment) Act, which finally granted daughters equal coparcenary rights in ancestral property alongside sons. Married or unmarried, daughters now possessed equal birthrights in ancestral property, including agricultural land.
This amendment was historic.
But history changed only on paper.
No corresponding reforms were introduced in state Land Revenue Laws or administrative systems. The colonial structure governing land ownership remained intact. As a consequence, the promise of equality failed to translate into lived reality, reducing a landmark legal reform into little more than symbolic justice for millions of women farmers.
A 2005 report of the erstwhile Planning Commission revealed that only 8 per cent of women in India owned land. Nearly two decades later, despite constitutional guarantees and legal reforms, women’s land ownership remains trapped between a mere 8-14 per cent.
These figures expose an uncomfortable truth: between rights guaranteed in law and rights realised on the ground stands the decisive political will of the state.
The failures of India’s institutions regarding women farmers can be measured in many ways. Yet one undeniable fact remains: even after 78 years of independence, Parliament and state assemblies have failed to enact a comprehensive Women Farmers’ Entitlement Law through the collective leadership of elected women representatives.
The reason is equally clear.
Women legislators in Parliament and state assemblies still do not possess politically decisive representation. Their numbers remain insufficient to shape transformative legislation capable of delivering historic justice to millions of women farmers.
A truly democratic India demands far more than symbolic participation. It requires decisive representation.
Countries that have advanced significantly toward gender equality—such as Sweden, Norway, and South Africa—have approximately 45 per cent women’s representation in Parliament. France, Germany, and the United Kingdom maintain representation between 35 and 38 per cent. India, by contrast, stands at barely 15 per cent today.
This imbalance explains why the Private Member’s Bill on Women Farmers’ Entitlement, introduced in 2011 by Bharat Ratna Dr. M. S. Swaminathan, failed to receive meaningful political support. Neither political parties nor Parliament treated it with urgency. Even today, the issue remains absent from serious national debate.
The same reality extends across India’s state assemblies. Chhattisgarh leads with approximately 21 per cent women legislators, followed by Bihar (14 per cent), West Bengal (13 per cent), and states such as Jharkhand, Rajasthan, and Haryana with roughly 11-14 per cent representation. In most assemblies, women’s political presence remains numerically weak and structurally subordinate.
Consequently, half the nation continues to remain politically incomplete.
The Nari Shakti Vandan Act, 2023 could have become the first historic step toward correcting centuries of injustice against women. It could have paved the way for transformative legislation such as a Women Farmers’ Entitlement Law. Losing this opportunity means perpetuating a patriarchal political order that continues to deny justice to millions of women whose votes sustain Indian democracy itself.
These women elect governments, build the rural economy, feed the nation, and sustain families—yet remain excluded from ownership, authority, and political power.
This is not merely a legislative failure.
It is a moral failure of democracy itself.
By failing to secure meaningful proportional representation for women in the twenty-first century, India’s Parliament has failed a historic test of justice. The time has come to collectively reclaim a moral and democratic path forward—one that places women, dignity, equality, and justice at the very centre of India’s future.
Ramesh Sharma is National Coordinator of Ekta Parishad
Views expressed are the author’s own and don’t necessarily reflect those of Down To Earth