OF the numerous studies on nutrition in India, only a few pay attention to women’s assetless gendered position in social institutions, not appreciating that without substantial improvement in women’s socioeconomic position it would be difficult to achieve nutrition security. Most state schemes and development projects tend to focus on women’s responsibility in the provisioning of nutrition, without giving attention to enhancing their freedom from male dependency in resource management and a systemic subjugation embedded in socio-cultural norms. This article explores the growing concern for women’s access to justice with gender asset equality among India’s indigenous societies.

Research has increasingly highlighted that asset disparities between women and men affect agricultural productivity and food/nutrition security, and that women’s work in agriculture and production of food goes unrecognized and social norms about women’s work limit their unmediated right to access forests, land, finances and new technologies. This, in turn, skews distribution of economic growth and promotes structures of power and inequality that deny marginalized people, such as indigenous peoples and indigenous women in particular, access to justice and effective control over their lands and forests.

According to recent reports, close to 870 million people of the 7.1 billion people in the world (1 in 8) suffered from chronic undernourishment in 2010-2012¹ and the consumption level of almost 680 million people across both urban and rural areas in India fell short of its poverty line of Rs 1,336 per capita per month.² Rough estimates suggest that 1.3 billion people lack access to electricity and 2.7 billion people rely on traditional biomass for cooking food.³

Estimates show that 70% of these are women/girls who have much lower right to production assets: land, house, new technologies, as well as representation in political and economic decision making. Further, women have the primary responsibility for the production of food and procurement of energy and water. Surprisingly enough, the invisibility of these tasks in systems of national accounting, and women’s marginal access to rights to own and control productive assets, show the massive and complex nature of gender inequality. Close to half the population is kept under control with systemic violence within the home and outside, and their dependency is maintained by traditional institutions and state policies.

Following the post 2015 development agenda discussions, civil society groups across the Asia-Pacific region have drawn attention to the inter-country global inequality as well as rise in intra-country inequality in the emergent economies. For example, the pattern of economic growth in China since the 1980s and in India since the 1990s has worsened inequality within the country, possibly a result of a shift from agriculture to industry and from rural to urban areas.

Discussing the growing intra-country inequality in the rising powers of Asia, a recent study noted that the Gini Coefficient increased by 24% in China and by 16% in India during the decade of the 1990s.⁴ Significantly, disproving the Kuznets curve (i.e., income inequality falls as society modernizes), Thomas Piketty’s analysis of accumulation and distribution of capital worldwide shows that inequality has increased in the last 30 years almost everywhere, including the United States. ‘The history of inequality is shaped by the way economic, social and political actors view what is just and what is not, as well as by the relative power of those actors and the collective choices that result.’⁵

 

Indigenous peoples arguably constitute among the most vulnerable populations for a variety of reasons. Most notable is their substantial dependence on natural resources, making them vulnerable to changes in the quality and quantity of natural resources. They encounter additional challenges as they often face discrimination and live in secluded communities. Frequently denied access to decision making processes, the ecological systems upon which they depend are increasingly controlled by non-indigenous peoples and corporations.

The 2006 Human Development Index (HDI) for Scheduled Tribes (adivasis) in India shows that their HDI is almost one-third below that of the Indian average and, on an international scale, they fall among the poorer countries of Africa.⁶ They are subject to displacement in the name of development projects from which they derive little or no benefit. Often they suffer legal discrimination, viz. in peninsular India, where they are subject to non-judicial forms of punishment and imprisonment. Given limited access to education, health facilities, new technologies, agricultural inputs, credit and infrastructure development, their economies have remained virtually cut-off from the country’s economic growth and technological development.

 

Their vulnerability to food and nutrition is attributable to the iniquitous relations of gender and power embedded in the larger social, political and economic institutions that determine, inter alia, legal rights and ownership, customary and religious practices, and economic, business and livelihood options. Among adivasi women, for example, access to land, credit, and resources can be further restricted, going beyond the already limited access to indigenous peoples on the whole, such that they may experience inequality in the market and workplace even within their communities, all of which further exacerbates exclusion and poverty. This is clear when examining indigenous women’s ownership and control of assets, participation in decision making processes, production of food, gender roles in the household and local economy and women’s risk of gender based violence.

 

The transfer of forest management out of community hands and into private companies or individuals has resulted in greater socio-economic disparity in many forest societies. Income generated from forests and power is accumulated under local elites, who have commonly excluded women and the poor from usufruct, ownership and control rights to land and forests. Hence, forest based adivasi and indigenous societies have in many cases experienced enhanced gender inequalities.⁷

Among the matrilineal Khasi, for example, women’s status has traditionally depended on their claim to and ownership of ancestral property. Women’s ownership of land, however, is no longer the determinant feature of the Khasi property system, in large part due to privatization. In some villages, formerly community owned forests are no longer deemed to constitute ‘ancestral property’ in the process of registration. Instead, the land may be deemed ‘self-acquired’ property, the right to which is governed by different principles and controlled by men who legalize ownership. In other villages, however, forests were privatized and the land was divided and distributed to those whose lands or households were adjacent to the forest, and titles given in the names of women and men.⁸

Alongside the legalities of ownership, rules governing resource use have been changed in land and forest management. In the traditional systems of the Khasi, Jaintia and Garo in India, and Mosuo in Yunnan, China, for example, women’s ancestral property was managed by her uncle or brother. The direct role of the maternal uncle or brother remained even after the men married into other clans. This was possible since marriages often took place within the same village. But, increasingly husbands are effectively managing land and forests, as well as the capital they generate – a key economic resource for households. This capital, however, may also be deemed ‘self-acquired property’ and thus passed on from father to son, bypassing the traditional matrilineal economic system. While women in landholding Khasi families are in a better position than if they were completely property-less, the rise of the timber industry has enabled men, as husbands, to increase control of the family’s economy.

 

In landless Khasi families, the main source of cash income is wages from logging, typically earned and controlled by men, which has contributed to male domination in these households. During field visits in 2006, 2008 and more recently in 2011 in Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh and Andhra Pradesh, India, women often cited threats by their husbands – including beatings and expulsion from the house – should their husbands demand but be denied money for liquor. The women, without claim to land or the house, had little with which to bargain. Comparatively, being thrown out of the house is something that a house owning Khasi woman is not likely to be subjected to.⁹ The Nagas, on the other hand, are patrilineal where women have no inheritance rights over land and housing.

 

The linkage between women’s exclusion and inequality can appear self-evident. Less evident, however, are the multiple interdependent causes of vulnerability of women resulting from inequality in gendered social systems among indigenous peoples. The only case of a woman becoming a Gaon Buri (village elder) near Dimapur has been strongly opposed by the Federation of Gaon Buras of Nagaland. On the other hand, there are cases in Arunachal Pradesh of woman being designated as gaon buris.¹⁰ Discussing ‘the image of the Khasi male’, Tiplut Nongbri captures the complex reality through a poem.¹¹

A new world comes rolling in heralding the epoch of father and son

Yet man’s position remains unchanged

His power/authority gains greater height

In his natal home he is the revered ‘mama’

In his conjugal home, the father

It is for us to take good care

To bring the maternal uncle and father together

Among adivasis, women can be further marginalized within their traditional institutions as they often have little representation or voice in village councils. While amendments to India’s Constitution in the 1990s which decentralized governance, like the Panchayati Raj Extension to Scheduled Areas (PESA), mandate that women shall have one-third reservation in local government institutions, this has not been implemented in a number of states including in adivasi areas. Male leaders in adivasi communities defend practices that exclude women from decision making in the communities; even in matrilineal communities of Meghalaya in India, and Mosuo in China, women are excluded from the village councils.

 

Patricia Mukhim, a Khasi woman writer and journalist, observed that the recent introduction of formal village management systems, which reinforce men’s role as community managers, limits women’s participation in community-level decision making processes regarding natural resource management, including management of forests and land. We can also attribute this control by men to the establishment of once fallow lands as village reserved forests, and the associated flow of funds into the village through development projects like the IFAD funded Northeast India Natural Resource Management Project, which have also served to increase men’s control over the economy, even though their knowledge of the local economy is limited since they neither play much of a role in production nor in marketing of agricultural produce.¹²

These power relations fit easily into the marketplace. In Khasi and Jaintia Hills of Meghalaya, for example, adivasi women are frequently at the mercy of more powerful traders who control the movement of goods in the market, resulting in women losing a lucrative enterprise since it has passed on to male hands because of women’s exclusion from markets. Compounding this, the role of women in subsistence and barter has increasingly been devalued with the expansion of market structures. One notable exception to this trend is in the wool-based enterprises of some mountain communities, such as in Uttarakhand, which are now moving into monetary economies.

There are, however, a few examples of advances in adivasi women’s empowerment. In the villages of East Khasi Hills, Meghalaya, for instance, a number of cases were reported in recent years where Khadduh – the youngest daughter who is traditionally obligated to provide support and succour to all members of the family – has asserted her claim to full ownership and management rights of her parental property. These claims were made in response to attempts by the uncle or brother of the Khadduh to claim the family income and/or trees for their personal benefit.

 

Another example is the initiative of a forest cooperative woman leader – Kalavati Devi. While president of the Primary Forest Produce Cooperative Society in Bajawand block of Bastar district from 1996-2000, Kalavati initiated reform of the policies that govern distribution of harvesting allocations and payment for tendu leaf, commonly used in the bidi trade. Harvesting allocations granted via ‘collection cards’, were traditionally issued to the male head of the household, even if the woman was the primary collector of the tendu leaf. After much political bargaining, the policy was changed so the collective’s member (i.e., the person, typically a woman, who harvested the tendu leaf) would be issued the card as well as the related payments. As a result women are now better positioned to control the income from tendu leaf sales; household savings have reportedly increased, and women have gained influence over the cooperative’s decisions on the sale of tendu leaf. These policy changes have spurred the growth of the cooperative and enhanced the participation of women members in particular, who now have an opportunity to regain some control over forests, and their livelihoods.

 

The weakening of traditional norms among adivasi and indigenous peoples, along with the growing visibility of women in the marketing of agricultural products and in the public sphere overall has angered some men who have called for women’s return to domesticity. On the other hand, women having grown familiar with new gender roles and realizing the implication of the loss of control over land and other productive natural resources, are now demanding greater autonomy and independence. This underlying social context should be understood in cases where women suffer gender based violence, including the continued and in some areas increased violence against women in forest areas through such practices as demonizing of women as witches and witchcraft persecution.

In sum, this trend towards loss of control by indigenous women over natural resources and the compounding loss of relative power in relation to men, can largely be attributed to four significant constraints: (a) interventions from outside the community – such as colonization, privatization, and globalization – which have by and large been extractive and exploitive; (b) fragility of indigenous economy and production structures; (c) weakening of traditional institutional mechanisms which could mitigate the damage; and as is typical in gendered relations, (d) a power differentiation between women and men reinforced by social, economic and political structures, whereby women have restricted voice and efficacy in community affairs, as well as limited and often exploitive external contacts.

 

What then can be the process of correcting gender inequality and nutrition insecurity among indigenous households and communities? The first step is to recognize the need for transformative change in hierarchy and power between women and men for individual rights to access ownership and control of land, forests and other assets. Indigenous societies, like many non-indigenous societies, are characterized by women’s unpaid, unrecognized household and care work, social subordination of women and its close links with violence against women and unequal access to ownership and management of productive assets.

A central concern is about women’s ownership of land, and why land is key to address food and nutrition security. First, social and economic justice suggests that those who work in fields should have the right to own and manage the fields. In India, 79% of rural women work in agriculture, and state level studies show that less than 10% have some kind of land titles in their names. Second, women’s unmediated (not through the house-hold or its head) right to land is important for better productivity and efficiency of resource use. Several studies in recent years¹³ have pointed out that secure and inalienable user rights with full control and ownership is necessary for spurring investment in food production and nutrition security. Based on a number of cases in Africa, researchers have pointed out that if women had similar access and inputs to land as the men, they could increase yields on their farms by 2.5-4%. And this in turn could reduce the number of malnourished and hungry people in the world by 12 to 17%.¹⁴ Third, women’s control and ownership of land, house and household income, enables them to use it for their own well-being as well as for other household members, children in particular. Fourth, asset distribution yields superior outcomes to income distribution. Land or asset ownership provides a meaningful basis for overcoming distortions in the functioning of the market and for restructuring unequal relations between women and men, with access to economic rights, technology, healthcare and governance.

 

Ownership is a bundle of rights. Along with ownership there is a need for further developing technical skills. Capacity development is not just a technical skill; it is a combination of knowledge, marketing and management skills alongside the effective right to own land and other productive assets. What is important to understand is that women’s asset/land ownership is most likely to change gender based power dynamics within the home and outside, thereby creating an egalitarian society. As pointed out by Thomas Piketty, ‘Knowledge and skill diffusion is the key to overall productivity growth as well as the reduction of inequality both within and between countries.’

A recent workshop in Delhi on adivasi women recommended support for capacity building in alternate livelihoods: (i) upgrading of traditional knowledge and skills and revitalizing then in areas where they have been lost; (ii) introduction of new knowledge and technologies to support women’s access to expanded markets; and (iii) women’s unmediated access to collective or individual ownership of resources, including land, housing and finances. This last is seen as a means to empower women and increase their economic security for better provision of food and nutrition of the young and not so young adivasi women and men. For example, in China’s agriculture system, it has been seen that through policies that improve women’s access to technologies and credit, indigenous women have been more likely to increase efficiency in their use of renewable energy, and more secure access to forest resources has resulted in lower rates of deforestation.

 

Culture is neither historically given; nor is it static. Rather, it is part of the ongoing process of socio-economic and political change. Women’s movement, like any other social movement, creates its own culture and new social gender norms. Such new social norms or cultural configurations also create social conflicts or possible contradictions arising from existing and newly created norms. Thus, new social and gender relations and norms operate in a dialectical way, introducing the germs of change that new movements may carry.

Initiatives to implement gender-responsive policies can influence change in the slow-moving institutions of social and cultural norms. Hence, the state policy has a definite role to play in creating enabling and empowering conditions for women to advance their agency for nutrition security with women’s unmediated rights to land, forests and management capabilities.

 

Footnotes:

1. Food and Agriculture Organization, The State of Food Insecurity in the World, 2012. <http://www.fao.org/docrep/016/i3027e/i3027e00.htm> (accessed on 17 June 2014).

2. McKinsey Global Institute, From Poverty to Empowerment: India’s Imperative for Jobs, Growth and Effective Basic Services. Mumbai, 2014.

3. McKinsey Global Institute, 2014, ibid; International Energy Agency, Modern Energy for All. <http://www.worldenergyoutlook. org/resources/energydevelopment/> (accessed on 17 June. 2014).

4. Dev Nathan and Sandip Sarkar, ‘Global Inequality, Rising Powers and Labour Standards’, Oxford Development Studies 42(2), June 2014, pp. 278-295.

5. Thomas Piketty, Capital in the 21st Century. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, 2014.

6. Sandip Sarkar, Sunil Mishra, Harishwar Dayal and Dev Nathan, ‘Development and Deprivation of Scheduled Tribes’, Economic and Political Weekly, 18 November 2006.

7. Govind Kelkar, Dev Nathan and Pierre Walter (eds.), Gender Relations and Forest Societies in Asia: Patriarchy at Odds. Sage Publications, New Delhi, London and Thousand Oaks, 2003.

8. Dev Nathan, ‘Northeast India: Market and the Transition From Communal to Private Property’, in Dev Nathan, Govind Kelkar and Pierre Walter (eds.), Globalisation and Indigenous Peoples in Asia: Changing the Local-Global Interface. Sage Publications, New Delhi, London and Thousand Oaks, 2004.

9. Govind Kelkar, Adivasi Women Engaging with Climate Change. UNIFEM, IFAD and The Christensen Fund, New Delhi, 2009.

10. Jarjum Ete and Julie Bazeley, ‘Local Governance in Arunachal Pradesh.’ Rome, IFAD, mimeo; Dev Nathan, Ganesh Thapa and Govind Kelkar, Market and Indigenous Peoples in Asia: Lessons from Development Projects. Oxford University Press, New Delhi, 2012.

11. Tiplut Nongbri, Development Masculinity and Christianity: Essays and Verses From India’s North East. Indian Institute of Advanced Study, Shimla, 2014.

12. Patricia Mukhim, Retrieving Indigenous Traditional Practices of Khasi Indigenous Tribes of Northeast India. Unpublished report, 2008.

13. ILO, Economic Security for a Better World. International Labour Organization, 2004; Food and Agriculture Organization, The State of Food and Agriculture 2010-2011: Women in Agriculture: Closing the Gender Gap for Development. FAO, Rome, 2011; World Bank, World Development Report 2012: Gender Equality and Development. World Bank, Washington D.C., 2011.

14. FAO, 2011, ibid.