Recasting Citizenship for Development - File UPI

Restructuring the Employment Guarantee Scheme 149
70 women had some land, which does not give us landholding size. The
majority were landless. Only 39 women claimed to have farming as a
basic category for income, while 110 earned their income from wages.
Nine earned their main income from salaries, having salaried persons in
their families. In 142 families, there was only one woman as a working
member, whereas in 122 families there was only one working man.
In 23 families, more than one woman was earning money, compared to
35 families with more than one earning man. Women had a strong presence
as workers and earning members in the family.
In all, 61 women came from families earning less than Rs 2,000 a month,
while 92 earned less than Rs 1,000; 32 of the women did not report on this.
Of the 185 women, 106 had BPL cards and 75 did not; 27 women said
that their families have taken bank loans: seven had repaid the loan,
16 were either in the process of doing so, or may have been defaulters. Of
the 103 women who had taken the saving group loan, 70 had borrowed
more than Rs 1,000 and the rest below Rs 1,000, and of these, 26 women
had returned the loan and 67 were in the process of returning it. The
loans were mainly for illness, house repairs and, in a few cases, for family
farming. SHG activity was apparently not very strong, in terms of the
availability of loan funds. Among all these 185 women, there was no major
income-generating activity.
We could not get much background information on the villages as it
was very difficult to meet the gram sevaks or talathi in the village. We
tried to meet them at the taluka offices during their monthly meetings. But
even with an appointment, on the particular day they would not be there
to share the information. So our village proformas could not be filled.
WOMEN’S VOICES
Our interaction with the women on the matter of accessing land for orchard
cultivation is presented below in their own voices.
On the Availability of Land
The majority of the women did not have land of their own and were
worried that nobody would give land on lease to poor women. The gairan