The Odisha government with support of a social organisation ‘Landesa’ has decided to identify landless single women to provide them homestead land.
District Administrations of Ganjam, Mayurbhanj, Koraput, and Kalahandi have prioritised land allocation to single women through the Women Support Centres and 76 of them are operating in each tehsil office of these districts. “It is an attempt to reach out to those ‘invisible’ single women who account for 12 per cent of rural women and would, perhaps, have never been identified and visible,” said Sibabrata Choudhury, Odisha director of Landesa. According to official sources, the programme includes a computerised Management Information System (MIS) to create a master database of all single women at tehsil level.
It filters data to facilitate land and social security services to the needy women from the tehsil and block offices. Unique Access Codes (UAC) have been assigned to both these offices to access soft-data for processing service delivery and updating information. Revenue officials have been oriented to prioritise the cases of single women and ensure that each and every single woman is identified and included in the programme.
On August 12, Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik distributed patta for homestead land to 57 landless single women in Hinjli tehsil of Ganjam district through Women Support Centres established in the district with support of Landesa.
According to Ganjam District Collector Premchand Choudhary, the objective of this programme is to establish an institutional framework to protect the land rights of single women. This programme has introduced a ‘participatory women-focus enumeration method’ that uses Anganwadi workers enumerate ‘uncounted’ single women, widows, abandoned, divorcees and physically challenged as well as unmarried women.
As per a study by World Bank of gender inclusive land governance in Odisha, only 3.3 per cent of land is owned by women. Fifty four per cent rural households in Odisha are landless.
According to another study, there are 10.6 lakh woman-headed households in Odisha. But till now there is no official enumeration regarding landless single women in the state.
Land allocation to single women to be done through Women Support Centres
Prasanta Patnaik