In 1994, Bina Agarwal, a professor at the University of New Delhi, wrote the seminal book on gender and land rights - A Field of One's Own. Last week, the US State Department released a rather distorted version of Agarwal's conclusions. In a release entitled "Women's Lack of Property Rights Linked to Abuse, Experts Say", the State department has reduced the complex web of social and material burdens on women to one simple solution, and one simple right - the right to private property.

Of course, it is an indictment of our planet that women control pitifully little of it - one factoid based, as far as I've been able to find out, on data that's now over 20 years old, is this: women grow more than half the food in the Global South, but own less than 1% of the land there.

But rights to property are one set of rights among many - such as rights to healthcare, to education, to employment. And in Promised Land, a book I've just finished editing, Sofia Monsalve has put the case for women's rights to land in a far broader context.

... read more »

Raj's blog | 2 comments | email this page | 1 attachment

Posted on 13 December, 2006 - 09:06

Singur is a fertile and vibrant farming area in the Hoogly district of West Bengal, India. On December 2, it becamethe scene of brutal repression, as armed police beat men, women and children to evict them from their land.

Using a colonial-era land-grabbing law, the Communist government of West Bengal has announced that it will seize the land from the poor, and give it to Tata Motors, in order to build a parts factory.

The government had offered a less fertile area for the company, but Tata rejected it. Ready to keep the industry happy, the government offered Tata a 1250 acre plot of land, home to 11 villages, in Hoogly.

Image from Aid India's coverage. ... read more »

Raj's blog | add new comment | email this page

Posted on 4 December, 2006 - 07:11