Recasting Citizenship for Development - File UPI

28 SUMI KRISHNA
Following sustained campaigns by the women’s movement, the law on
the inheritance of property has now been reformed. The Hindu Succession
(Amendment) Act, 2005, removes gender inequalities in the inheritance
of agricultural land (see Box 12.1).
A few of the more progressive states had introduced legal and administrative
measures by the 1980s to give women a share in property (such
as ‘joint pattas’, title deeds in the names of both the husband and the
wife). The central budget for 2005–6 gave women concessions with regard
to property registration. Extrapolating data from a larger study on watershed
development in Karnataka, M. Indira (Chapter 12, this volume)
found that women’s title to land had not as yet given them a greater say
in decision-making relating to production, marketing, purchase and
sale of assets, or control over money. Indeed, earning an income seems
to have been more significant for women than owning land. Similarly,
Geethakutty’s (2006) survey of a randomly selected group of farming
women in Thrissur district in Kerala found a relatively high proportion
of women who owned land in their own names or held it jointly with
their husbands. Yet land ownership, whether by inheritance or purchase,
did not seem to have much impact on women’s ability to access farmersupport
services. The farming women perceived the potential for activities
only in those spaces that were intended for women alone, notably the
Self Help Groups (SHGs). ‘General institutions’ like cooperative societies
were not viewed as women’s spaces. Moreover, both land-owning and
landless women did not perceive landownership as important either for
livelihood or their own status. This has resonances with the attitude of the
poor women of Osmanabad, despite the geographical and socio-economic
distance that separates the drought-prone, backward hinterland of
Maharashtra from the green fields and waterways of Thrissur. These micro
studies should not be read as indicating that land ownership is not important,
but they do show that having title deeds to land in their names
may not always be sufficient to enhance women’s livelihoods and position.
Gender-just laws do facilitate change, but the transformation of social
practice is a much more difficult process. Consider the case of Goa (a
Portuguese colony till its liberation and union with India in 1961). Civil
law in Goa follows the Portuguese Civil Code, established over a century
ago in 1867, which makes the registration of marriages compulsory for
all communities and assures married women a share in their husband’s