India

Goal: Catalyzing systems change at national, state, and community levels to strengthen land rights for millions

In India, landlessness is a better predictor of poverty than illiteracy or membership of a Scheduled Caste.

Since 2000, Landesa has engaged in catalytic work to ensure all women and men living in India’s rural areas have secure rights to the land they depend on. These rights enable families to make investments in their land and offer shelter and resilience from climate shocks. And in a country where 70 percent of women work in agriculture but less than 14 percent have legal rights to agricultural land, Landesa’s gender-transformative approach helps equip India’s women farmers with the power to improve their lives.

Working through trusted partners in India, Landesa drives progress on land rights from the national to local levels, engaging in systems change work with the potential to strengthen land rights for millions.

At the national level, Landesa works closely with policymakers to advocate for stronger land rights through research, policy recommendations, and implementation support. At the state level, Landesa builds the capacity of land administration officials to implement more equitable processes, such as including women’s names on land titles. And within communities, Landesa partners with civil society on land literacy trainings to build awareness of women’s rights to land.

Our work

Women’s Land Literacy

Landesa and partner organizations support the Government of West Bengal to impart land literacy to millions of women. By leveraging the existing network of women’s self-help groups, this initiative helps women to gain land titles and empowerment. A partnership with the Tribal Development Department helps promote women’s land literacy within the state’s Indigenous communities.

Sangha Facilitation Centers

Landesa supports the West Bengal State Rural Livelihoods Mission to launch women-led facilitation centers that offer rural communities cost-efficient services to update land records. These centers provide a low-cost way for women to update land records while creating entrepreneurship opportunities and job training for women.

Coastal Livelihoods and Mangroves Project

Landesa’s regional Coastal Livelihoods and Mangroves Project addresses laws and policies regarding forest tenure, land use planning, and climate mitigation and adaptation to protect the contiguous 4.6 million hectares of mangrove forests in the coastal region of the Bay of Bengal and Southeast Asia. In the Indian state of West Bengal, Landesa works with coastal communities in the Sundarbans to support reforestation and conservation, forest rights, and alternative livelihoods.

Renewable Energy Initiative

Renewable energy (RE) investment is crucial for India to transition to a cleaner, low carbon economy. But the high demand for land in RE projects poses a risk to land rights for many of the people living in India’s poorest places. To help ensure India’s energy transition is regenerative and just, Landesa partners with Forum for the Future on the Renewable Energy Initiative. As a project partner, Landesa conducted research on land use and renewable energy expansion to help understand the impacts on and adaptive capacity of local communities and women as India moves towards drawing 50 percent of its electricity from renewables by 2030.

Strengthening Land Rights of Tribal Women

Landesa-supported research revealed a brutal system of abuse and torture that deters tribal women from accessing their rights to land in Jharkhand State, with similar trends observable in India’s other tribal areas. Landesa supports local stakeholders to understand these challenges and carry out initiatives to change this status quo.

Model Agricultural Land Leasing Act

Landesa partnered with India’s national and state government leaders to draft the 2016 Model Agricultural Land Leasing Act, which removes a provision banning leasing of agricultural land. The policy change clears a path for more than 20 million tenant farmers in informal leasing agreements to gain formal legal recognition of their tenancy rights.