Chopdiyal, Uttarakhand. At first glance, this small hill village nestled in the Himalayas in Chamba tehsil of Tehri district reveals itself to be a settlement of hardworking farmers. Almost every house, perched along the slope below the road, is surrounded by small patches of farmland. Tree branches along the fields are stacked with fodder collected from nearby forests and left to dry, enough to sustain livestock through the winter. Apple, walnut and apricot trees, now stripped of their leaves, absorb the December cold, essential for better fruiting in the next season. In some fields, kiwi vines sway overhead, adopted as a progressive method to protect crops from wild animals. Wild boar and monkey troops that damage potatoes and peas tend to stay away, as kiwi is not to their liking.
About 40 families live in Churedhar Tohk of Chopdiyal village. Most men have migrated out of the village for work, while women shoulder the responsibility of running households, tending fields and orchards, and managing life in the village and nearby forests. There is also one household where a woman lives alone.
Shakuntla Devi leads the way around the fields and orchards adjoining her home. She owns about 15 nali of farmland. At the back of her house, slightly uphill, stretches a small kiwi orchard, while in the lower area in front, nearly a dozen apple trees stand bare for the winter. Plum, apricot, and walnut trees are also scattered across her land. After harvesting seasonal vegetables such as radish, cabbage, and leafy greens, she is now preparing to sow peas for the next cycle.
In Uttarakhand, a traditional land unit, called a nali, is roughly the size of a badminton court, and about 50 nalies make up one hectare.
Making most of the small, day-to-day farming decisions herself, Shakuntla Devi adds, “I decide what to grow, take care of the fields, and prepare manure. My husband helps with ploughing. I have 15 cattle, and collecting fodder for them from the forest is also my responsibility. We use the dung from the cattle to make manure and apply it to the fields. This keeps the soil healthy and the hills green.”
Wielding her sickle, hoe, and spade with skill, progressive farmer Shakuntla Devi is nowhere to be found on the official papers of her fields. The land and house are registered in her husband, Satyaprasad Dabral’s name, and legally, he alone is recognized as the farmer. As a result, the popular government scheme PM-KISAN, which provides direct income support to farmers across the country, is credited only to his account.
One side of the veranda is bathed in sharp winter sunlight, while the other remains cold in the shade. The village women gather in the sunlit section. To give their agricultural produce a commercial identity, they formed the Ujala Self-Help Group. The group’s meetings usually revolve around soil, crops, and prices, but today the discussion is about something else altogether: rights over the land they cultivate.
“I don’t have to hold out my hand to anyone for money. I’ve been farming for the past 40 years. Since joining the group, I keep the income from farming with me. My husband has a job, but the farmland is in his name. I know that real power lies with the person whose name is on the land papers. Women spend their entire lives living under pressure. They belong neither fully to their parental home nor to their marital home. Rights over land would make us stronger in both.”
Savitri Devi, who has married off three daughters and a son, remarks, “Change will be possible only when everyone accepts that women have rights over land.” The other women present nod in agreement.
“Land rights and gender inequality are deeply and decisively interconnected.” Bina Agarwal, Professor of Development Economics and Environment at the Global Development Institute, University of Manchester (UK), has carried out extensive and influential research on women’s land rights across India and South Asia. In one of her reports, she writes, “Gender inequality in the ownership and control of property creates the single decisive factor in women’s economic and social status, and in their empowerment.”
The process of legal reform to grant women equal inheritance rights in India began after Independence. In 1956, the Hindu Succession Act legally recognised Hindu women’s property rights for the first time. The most significant and decisive change came in 2005 with an amendment to the Hindu Succession Act, which made daughters equal coparceners by birth in ancestral property, including agricultural land, and granted them the same rights as sons, regardless of whether they were married or unmarried.
Economist Bina Agarwal notes in her research that legal reforms have strengthened women as daughters, increasing their share in ancestral property. Yet in practice, most women acquire land only as widows, not as daughters. “For women’s empowerment, it matters at what stage of life and in what form they receive land. Rights as a daughter increase her decision-making power within the family. Land in the name of married women protects them from domestic violence,” she writes.
The only woman in Chopdiyal village with land in her name is Laxmi Devi. Her name was registered on paper nine years ago, after the death of her husband, alongside her two sons. Both sons now live in different cities with their families for work, and she remains on her own in her village home. “I keep my fields lush and productive myself. I even do the ploughing. When there is no rain, the soil becomes very hard, and it takes a lot of effort,” she admits with quiet determination.
Laxmi Devi regrets that when the land was registered in her and her sons’ names, her daughter received nothing. “When we marry off our daughters, we give gifts willingly, but we do not give them their rightful share,” she laments.
In 2023, Chopdiyal village won the National Panchayat Award for cleanliness, greenery, and carbon neutrality. Yet most of the women who made this achievement possible are unable to directly benefit from any government schemes.
With men migrating to cities for work, women left behind in the hills are nurturing their fields with their own labour. Like the women farmers of Chopdiyal village, across India and many other countries, women still have limited legal rights to land. The United Nations Women organisation has highlighted this issue on its website.
“Due to social norms, traditions, and laws, women’s rights to property are restricted in many countries. This limits their economic standing and opportunities to escape poverty. Even in countries where most smallholder farmers are women and they perform more than 75 percent of the agricultural work, they are often denied ownership of the land on which they depend to support their families,” according to the United Nations Women organisation.
In India, there is no clear official data on women’s ownership of land and houses. In an article published in December 2023, the United Nations Population Fund India compared property-related data from the 2014–15 National Family Health Survey (NFHS-4) and the 2019–21 NFHS-5. During this period, land ownership solely in a woman’s name increased from around 7 per cent to 8 per cent, while joint ownership between women and men rose from approximately 21 per cent to 23 per cent.
“Our security is tied to the land,” says Sushma Pundir, a resident of Chopdiyal. “If there is ever a conflict with her husband, a woman can be told to leave the house. Farming her own land allows her to sustain her livelihood. That is why both daughters and daughters-in-law must have land rights.”
“We have saved our land from turning barren. It is women who have protected the forests. If the hills are green, it is because of us,” reflects Sushma, highlighting the day-and-night toil of women in preserving the earth’s greenery. “We know that as long as these forests survive, so will our livestock, our farming, and our livelihoods.”
To help women earn better livelihoods through horticulture and agriculture, the Himotthan Society supports them in setting up polyhouses, accessing high-quality seeds and saplings, establishing orchards, and taking loans from banks.
“In the village, it is women who manage the farming and livestock,” explains cluster coordinator Anil Ramola. “Lack of land ownership often becomes a barrier when connecting women to government schemes. In such cases, they submit an affidavit stating: I belong to this family, my husband’s name is this, and the land recorded in the accounts or khata is under his name.”
Ramola points out that men living away in cities often take little interest in these activities, and even when women want to, they are unable to benefit from the schemes. He cites the example of a program for setting up polyhouses.
“Women face difficulties in accessing loans from banks. There isn’t a single woman here who has a Kisan Credit Card in her own name. Most women also do not receive benefits under the PM-Kisan Samman Nidhi scheme,” he explains.
The data from the PM-Kisan Samman Nidhi scheme sheds some light on the state of land rights for women farmers. In a written reply to the Rajya Sabha in December 2024, it was stated that there are over 87 million eligible beneficiaries across the country, of which just under 20 million are women. In other words, only two or three out of every ten beneficiaries are female.
In Uttarakhand, women account for around 16 per cent of the total beneficiaries under the PM-Kisan Samman Nidhi, meaning that only one or two out of every ten beneficiaries are women.
“Laws on paper ensure that a framework exists for the recognition of women’s rights to land and forests but for the rights to be enjoyed fully there needs to be a structure in place that operationalises the provisions of the laws. And an effective and efficient structure would ensure that women enjoy in their everyday lives the benefits of the recognition of their land and forest rights. Hence if implementation of laws is not realised then rights remain only a euphemistic dream for women,” emphasises Sharanya Nayak, who works on tribal community rights in Odisha’s Eastern Ghats. She emphasises that land is not just a tool for farming; it is the very foundation of survival.
Sharanya is a programme adviser with RITES Forum, a member organization of the Asia Pacific Forum on Women, Law and Development (APWLD).
Far from the Himalayan range, Tijmali is a hill in the long, winding Gandhamardan mountain range of the Eastern Ghats, spread across Rayagada and Kalahandi districts in Odisha. Indigenous Kandha tribal women are struggling to secure their land rights.
Sharanya shares a photograph showing women armed with sticks, protesting Vedanta’s bauxite mining project. For the past two years, they have been demonstrating to protect their land rights. She voices, “Tijmali is not just a mountain with bauxite reserves, but an abode of their reigning deity Tij Raja (King of Tijmali). Every year twice, thousands of tribal and non-tribal forest dwellers, farmers, traders, and agricultural workers gather at the hilltop on Tijmali to celebrate the starting and ending of their agricultural season and offer prayers to Tij Raja.”
“Land and forest rights are central to the empowerment of women as this gives them control over the productive resources that can ensure their self-reliance and self-sufficiency in food and livelihood security. Being independent in every aspect of life gives women the power to challenge all forms of injustices and violence on them and ensure that they have the autonomy to decide about their life without fear. Hence, rights are key to their self-determination and dignity,” asserts Sharanya.
“Granting women legal rights over land is essential but empowering them to protect those rights and use them effectively is just as important,” says M Gajalakshmi, who has worked for decades on Dalit women’s rights. She points to the case of 40 Dalit women in Magarajpur village in Andhra Pradesh’s Chittoor district, who were allotted land titles under a government scheme in 2010. Gajalakshmi is associated with the Society for Rural Education and Development, which works across Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu.
“The land these women received was allotted through pattas, but neither clear boundaries were demarcated nor were basic facilities, such as water for cultivation, provided,” Gajalakshmi explains. “Many of the women did not even know where the land allotted to them was located.”
“With no alternative livelihood options, families first sold the soil from their patta land and later mortgaged the patta documents to banks to take loans. Today, these women are neither in a position to repay the bank loans nor able to retain control over their land.”
According to Gajalakshmi, “Land in a woman’s name does not, by itself, amount to empowerment unless there is social and institutional support to protect that right and enable its use.”
In Chopdiyal village in Uttarakhand, institutional support has helped women strengthen farming and build self-reliance from their small fields and orchards. But for land to be recognised as theirs, they are still waiting for social traditions to shift.
One of the few men still living in the village, Shakuntala Devi’s husband, Satyaprasad Dabral, says such change will require initiative from the government. “It’s true that giving women land ownership will strengthen their rights and help them work even better. If land is to be registered in the names of daughters and daughters-i- law, the government must take the lead. There is nothing for men to fear in this,” he says.
The women farmers of Chopdiyal village break into laughter. “Then,” they joke, “the radio will start airing news for kisan behnein (farmer sisters) instead of kisan bhaiyon (farmer brothers).”
(This story was produced with support from Internews’ Earth Journalism Network.)