om e 's Ali a - Land ss De elo en - Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung, India Office

owned resource meant primarily for
generating revenue, has destroyed the
close links people had with the forest.
As a result, forests were exploited and
degraded, while people’s needs went
unfulfilled. This has also affected the
floral and faunal diversity present
in the forest, and led to numerous
conflicts between people and animals,
between people and the state and
between communities. As usual, the
worst victims of these conflicts have
been women.
The current impasse that we are
really faced with, arises out of
the precarious situation where
developmental activities of the
past have had a massive impact
on deepening widespread poverty,
squalor and environmental
degradation, but made only a feeble
impact on sustainable development
of local communities and their
capacities to maintain/improve their
environment and well-being.
Women are the backbone of hill
farming and related sustenance
activities. The selective male migration
to join the armed forces and the
numerous other service-oriented
activities in the plains leave them to
the harsh topography and the care
Impact of Aggressive Growth
of their family. Several studies have
been undertaken on the workload
of women in the hills, particularly
in Uttarakhand, so much so that it
has almost become a cliché that
drudgery and women in the hills are
synonymous.
Agriculture is the mainstay of the
people in the state, and women’s
contribution to agriculture is at all
stages – preparing the fields, sowing,
reaping, harvesting, threshing,
transporting, and sorting the grain.
They also look after the cattle; carry
head loads of fodder, fuel, manure,
flour, rock and clay (in case of house
construction). They collect grass,
fire wood, and often also graze the
animals in the forests.
In addition to this, they have to
continue with the daily household
chores of cleaning, cooking, fetching
water (often over long distances),
weaving, knitting, stitching and so
on. Thus their daily schedule is over
18 hours.
Women in Uttarakhand have to
suffer in two ways. First, they don’t
have property in their name i.e. they
don’t have land rights. Second, they
have to do all the work related with
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