Kerala 2005 - of Planning Commission

116
Table 7.12: Percentage Distribution by Sex of Operational Holdings and Area Under Operational Holdings
(in hectares) According to Size-class Groups, (1995-96) @
Size-class Number of Operational Holdings Area Under Operational Holdings
Male Female Institution Class (%)* Male Female Institution Class (%)#
0.5 to 1.0 75.29 23.75 0.96 93.96 77.68 21.16 1.16 53.24
1.0 to 2.0 83.42 15.03 1.55 4.16 83.55 14.88 1.58 20.44
2.0 to 4.0 84.87 12.86 2.26 1.52 84.40 13.32 2.27 14.24
4.0 to 10 82.54 12.30 5.16 0.31 82.14 12.19 5.67 6.07
Above 10 66.61 8.61 24.78 0.05 44.84 3.62 51.54 6.00
Total 75.79 23.18 1.03 100.00 78.14 17.16 4.70 100.00
@
This table is based on provisional data from the agricultural census of 1995-96.
* Percentage of the number of holdings in each size class to the total number of holdings.
# Percentage of the area in each size class to the total area under operational holdings.
Source: Agricultural Census Division, Directorate of Economics and Statistics, Government of Kerala in Women in Kerala, 2001.
disparity in land holding among SC and ST households and
all households (Government of Kerala, 2001).
On a rather contrary note, recent research has documented
women’s growing responsibility over management and
cultivation of family land (as well as other family property).
This trend has come in the context of diversification of
household incomes and the shift of male members from
agriculture to other occupations through migration or
otherwise (Morrison, 1997; Arun, 1999). Yet this may not
be visible in macro data, as women actively involved in
agriculture and related activities such as animal husbandry
continue to report/perceive themselves as housewives
(Ibid; Narayana, 2002).
What factors constrain women’s title, access to and control
over property? If practices that regulate inter-generational
transfer of property are clearly important, so also is women’s
poor occupational profile in the State, which restricts their
ability to purchase property. Title over property need not be
an adequate indicator of effective control and yet we know
that patrilineal societies have systematically denied women
substantial rights over immovable property. Kerala’s is no
longer an exception to this general situation. There have been
definitive indications over the last quarter of the twentieth
century that dowry is replacing inheritance rights as a mode
of transfer of property to or on account of women.
Up to at least the mid-1970s, women continued to
inherit some property among the matrilineal groups,
though distinctions were drawn among different kinds of
property (Gough, 1952; Fuller, 1976). A study of women’s
participation in the land market in a highland south
Travancore village found that a much higher proportion
of Nair women than men sold the land they inherited.
‘Migration due to marriage’ was the most important
reason for sale of land by Nair women (Varghese, 1988).
Whether the proceeds are reinvested in women’s names is
anybody’s guess. Among formerly matrilineal Ezhavas in
central Travancore, land was sold and the cash equivalent
given to the husband, a form of dowry that is not usually
under the control of the girl. Osella and Osella point out
that many women no longer have land to pass on to their
daughters and mother-daughter inheritance is becoming
rare. When they do inherit it is as widows, suggesting
anchorage to marriage, dependence and vulnerability
thereby. In a survey of widows in selected areas of north
and south India, Chen (2000: 373) found that 67 per cent
of the widows she surveyed in Kerala had inherited land
from their husband as against only 27 per cent who had
inherited land from their parents.
There is substantial evidence of the very general resort
to dowry payments across a cross-section of social and
economic groups. Dowry as a highly ‘competitive’ market
practice, increasingly divested of previous customary
regulations has been documented recently among the
Christians (Visvanathan, 1999; Kurien, 1994). Among the
matrilineal groups, over the past half century, there has
been a very general shift to dowry marriages (Osella and
Osella, 2000: 85; Puthenkalam, 1977; Lindberg, 2001; Uyl,
1995). More importantly, perhaps, the notion of dowry has
gained widespread acceptance in the State, across social
and economic groups (Eapen and Kodoth, 2003).
There has been a very general switch from dowries
in land and gold in the decades following the agrarian
reform to dowries in cash, gold and consumer durables
today. Osella and Osella (2000: 106) note that some
notional distinction was made between land and gold to
remain in the bride’s name, and cash and goods going to
the husband and his family. In practice, however, most