The Woman Farmers in Maharashtra Who are Fighting for Their Right to Own Land

In Bari village of eastern Maharashtra, Shubhangi Kulkarni farms an acre of land, carrying out subsistence agriculture while managing her household. What sets her apart is that she actually owns the land she works on, something only 10 percent of the women in the region do. The district is drought-prone, groundwater is depleting, and cash-crop monoculture of soyabean and sugarcane has thinned both soil and income. The nutritional deficiencies downstream of this, disproportionately affect women. A medical camp conducted in Bari in 2009 found severely low haemoglobin levels among women across the community. It was noted that women eat only leftovers after serving the men in the family. Nutritional insecurity here is not only a consequence of ecological and economic stressors but of who is considered entitled to eat first. Swayam Shikshan Prayog’s (a non-governmental organisation working with grassroots women’s collectives) one-acre model has trained women in the region to preserve seeds and grow 35 varieties of nutrient-rich vegetables, grains, and tubers requiring low water inputs, alongside poultry farming, dairy production, and goat rearing. Crop yields have increased by 25 percent since the 2009 pilot. The women describe the change in terms of food security, their children’s education, self-dependence, and respect—all of which, the film stresses, were conditioned on owning land in the first place.