Gender Equitable Land Governance In India

Nidhi Sharma & Dr. Shiv Raman, Assistant Professor, Amity University, Haryana

“A woman has no home and no surname.” Forever in Exile: Women as Diaspora”

- anonymous

ABSTRACT

Women's discrimination in owning land and property is becoming increasingly widely acknowledged. Several legal reforms have been implemented to give women equal property rights since India gained independence in 1947, including a new right of inheritance that was added in 2005. Despite this, only 11% of landowners in India are female and in 2020 the University of Manchester working paper found barely 16% of women in rural landowning households land.

As a result, agricultural property inheritance rules continue to be a quagmire of contradictory state and federal laws. Punjab, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, and even Delhi has regressive inheritance laws. Since 2016, married daughters have not been regarded as principal heirs in Uttar Pradesh, while Haryana has twice attempted to remove the progressive rights provided to women through the Hindu Succession Act 1956. Add to this the reluctance of many northern Indian governments to register land for women. As a result, women's rights and property rights remain unfinished business.

Examines the land rights and housing requirements of women in informal urban settlements in this prevalent environment of gender discrimination. Land tenure in slums is examined from a gender perspective, highlighting the difficulties women face in obtaining land tenure, and proposing policy reforms to improve women's ability to own land. As a result of the findings in this paper, we hope to have a significant impact on the debate over gender equity in land tenure by highlighting important aspects of political, legal, and cultural factors that affect the realization of women's land rights in North Eastern Parts of the country.