Presentation given by Landesa at GAAP final technical workshop in Addis Ababa, January 2013

1. Evaluation of Gender Effects of
Micro-Land Ownership for India’s
Landless Agricultural Laborers, in
Orissa and West Bengal
Vivien Savath and Pinaki Halder
Addis Ababa
January 9-11, 2013

2. Motivation
 Women’s independent and secure rights to land
are often overlooked and the interventions that address
them tend to be remedial in nature
 Landesa is guiding the implementation of a
number of innovative efforts to improve the
conditions of women and girls through multi-faceted
programs that enhance the security of their land rights
 Evaluating these efforts will provide key evidence on
the impact of differential access to and control over assets
by men and women as part of the GAAP portfolio

3. What type of assets?
 Land – in several forms:
 Access
 Perceived ownership
 Formally documented homestead land
(as households)
 Women’s names on land documents
(as individuals)
 Relative shares of ownership, or
gender-gap in land

4. Odisha Program Features
 Vasundhara and GKP
 Features: regularizes land; residents are
allocated land they are already on;
emphasis on joint title; garden support
 Timeline: 2004-present; Landesa
involved 2009-present
 Beneficiaries: households currently
residing on government land (Vasundhara)
and households on land that was
collectively owned (GKP)

5. West Bengal Program Features
 CDPA
 Features: allocates land that was either
purchased or vested; priority to female headed
households; emphasis on joint title with
women’s names first; basic support services
drinking water, housing, sanitation and roads
 Timeline: 2006-2011 (now known as NGNB)
 Beneficiaries: families according to selection
criteria that prioritizes scheduled tribes and
castes, female-headed households, families who
have been landless for 2 generations, etc.

6. Research questions
 Landesa hypothesizes household-level
impacts on:
 Investments in human capital
 Agricultural production

7. Research questions
 Landesa hypothesizes individual-level
impacts on:
 Women’s assets;
 Women’s participation in household decision-
making;
 Women’s perceptions of the security of their
land rights.

8. Quantitative Data
Baseline:
 Timeline: 2010 (West Bengal); 2010-2011 (Odisha)
 Sample: representative sample of 1,373 households covering
three districts (West Bengal); representative sample of 1, 730
households covering four districts (Odisha)
 Methods: survey questionnaire with head of household and
repeated subset of questions with female spouse (if available)
2012 GAAP data:
 Timeline: September-October 2012 (West Bengal and Odisha)
 Sample: same as baseline; with replacement
 Methods: survey questionnaire with female head of household

9. Qualitative Methods: Data
Key Informant Interviews:
 Purpose: process information about the land regularization and
allocation programs from implementers
 Sample: 15 in Ganjam, Odisha; 12 in Coochbehar, West Bengal.
 Selection: purposeful in qualitative study villages following up the
chain of command in the implementing government departments.
 Tools: semi-structured interview guide
Life History Interviews:
 Purpose: individual and household-level information about
livelihood strategies and how they have changed over time
 Sample: 14 in Ganjam, Odisha,;11 in Coochbehar, West Bengal
 Selection: purposeful among program beneficiaries, including large
minority groups, and to include different types of women.
 Tools: biographical interview guide and visual timeline

10. Qualitative Methods: Data
Focus Group Discussion:
 Purpose: insight into community level norms about land ownership and use, and
an understanding of the available livelihood activities within the village
 Sample: 7 in Ganjam, Odisha; 8 in Coochbehar, West Bengal
 Selection: purposeful. Groups of 4-8 conducted separately for female
beneficiaries, male beneficiaries, female head of household beneficiaries, and
females who were eligible, but non-beneficiaries.
 Tools: Focus group discussion guide and participatory exercise tools.

11. Proposed Analysis
Specific Hypothesis: Land ownership and documentation enables
additional livelihood strategies and therefore improves food security.
1. Draw upon qualitative and quantitative information to establish
the landlessness or vulnerability context, and identify livelihood
activities in the two states.
2. Quantitatively and iteratively define livelihood strategies that best
capture the combinations of activities undertaken by the
households in our sample.
3. Map every household to a particular livelihood strategy.
4. Create household level indicators of food security and calculate
mean levels of food security associated with the various livelihood
strategies to arrive at a logical rank order for these strategies.
5. Use multivariate analysis to assess whether households’ choice of
livelihood strategies vary with land access and ownership.

12. Landlessness and Vulnerability
 Land sales to arrange cash dowry for a
daughter’s marriage or to raise money for an
illness or other negative income shock
 Other causes of landlessness are more prevalent
by state
 Odisha - Displacement from large scale land acquisition
 Odisha – Scheduled Tribes mortgage away land
 West Bengal – high population density and land scarcity
 West Bengal – river erosion
“People are very concerned about loss of houses, but what remains
un-recorded is that-cultivable lands are going under water. We are
losing good quality cultivable lands.
–BDO West Bengal, age 32

13. Landlessness and Vulnerability
 Roughly half the focus groups concluded that
both men and women use and earn from land
but that land is understood to be owned by men
 All major respondent types acknowledged that
men at times sell land without consulting their
wives
Researcher - “Government has issued joint pattas. The name
of the wife has also been included in the patta, what are your
feelings about that?”
Respondent – “ It is good, we boys we don’t have much control
over ourselves. The patta being on her name means we won’t
lose that due to my foolishness.”
–Men’s Focus Group, West Bengal

14. Land and Food Security
 Nearly all beneficiary respondents (qualitative)
were growing vegetables in their backyard
garden
Mixed results on whether households were engaging
in agriculture prior to obtaining the patta; causality
Unable to isolate the effect of land from the
agricultural extension and seeds
Researcher: “What did you do after getting homestead patta?”
Participant: “What did I do? Grew some chili and other vegetables and was
fearless.”
Researcher: “Fearless in the sense?”
Participant: “In the sense if anyone would claim that this was their land
then we would have [had] to leave this place.”
–Life History, woman beneficiary, age 28

15. Intra-household Food Distribution
 Women are the food preparers
 Women will deprive themselves to feed the children under conditions
of scarcity (and share equally between the boys and girls)
“Children…are not mature enough to realize crisis. therefore it is wise
decision to not curtail from their quantity. Husbands need food because
they work hard- then only wives can sacrifice their food.”
–Women’s Focus Group, West Bengal
 Choice pieces (meat, fish heads) are usually reserved for the adult
men or boy children
 Gender differences were slightly more pronounced in West Bengal;
typical for women to eat off of the husband’s plate when he has
finished

16. Livelihood Activities
 Respondents reported a range of livelihood
activities that varied temporally (seasonally)
or according to necessity
 Common activities in both states were
agricultural labor on others’ fields (both
wage and non-wage), rearing
livestock, backyard cultivation of
vegetables, non-agricultural labor, seasonal
migration labor, and accessing the Public
Distribution Scheme for subsidized rations

17. Gendered Livelihood Activities
 Livelihood activities (and the assets
required to engage in them) varied by
gender
 Women – firewood collection, “home
work,” house-cleaning
 Men - weaving, rickshaw pulling, priestly
duties, plowing

18. Livelihood Strategies (quant)
[frequency table – only have data from
Jagatsinghpur and Khorda (2/4) from Odisha
ready]

19. Next Steps
 White paper – Does land ownership
enable better livelihood strategies?
Evidence from land titling and
allocation interventions in Odisha and
West Bengal, India
 World Bank paper - Can Government
Allocated Land Contribute to Food
Security? Intrahousehold Analysis of
West Bengal’s Microplot Allocation
Program

20. GAAP Partner Organizations