A thread on the need for gender budgeting in India. 1/n According to the 2010-11 Agriculture Census, 73% of rural women workers are farmers, but women’s land holdings account for 12.79% of all landholdings. #Farmers#genderequity ruralindiaonline.org/library/resour…
2/n Data from the NSSO shows that except for the MGNREGS, the gender disparity in wages is significant – men’s wages in agriculture are 1.4 times higher than the wages earned by women.
3/n An ILO study indicates that more than half the woman workers in agriculture are unpaid family labourers. 81% of women agriculture workers are from Dalit/Adivasi communities, 83% are from landless, marginal, or small farm households.
4/n Even though women work as cultivators & agricultural labourers, they say that they are ‘principally engaged in housework’. 61.6% rural women say household work is their principal activity. The report says that this so-called household work can be considered a part of farming.
5/n The reasons why women’s work in agriculture is under-reported in official statistics are many – it is often home-based, informal, flexible, an extension of their domestic work, and difficult to differentiate from paid work.
6/n To empower women farmers, the report recommends ensuring equal access to credit, insurance, technologies, inputs such as seeds and other measures. It also says that women farmers should be registered with the state, have equal wages, pensions, & child care support
7/n Further, the report recommends the joint registration of land (with the names of both spouses), recording women’s names in the cultivator’s column of land records, and at least 50% allocations to women across all schemes.
‘Who knew the lack of rain could kill my art?’ (a thread)
Three decades ago, no one wanted to teach a young Sanjay Kamble how to work with bamboo.
Today, when he wants to teach everyone his dying craft, no one wants to learn.
“It’s ironic how times have changed,” the 50-year-old says.
With the bamboo that grows in his one-acre field, Kamble mainly crafts irlas – a kind of raincoat used by paddy farmers in this region in western Maharashtra.
“My lungs feel like stone. I can barely walk,” says Manik Sardar.
In November, 2022, the 55-year-old was diagnosed with silicosis – an incurable pulmonary disease. “I have no interest in the upcoming elections,” he continues,
“I am only worried about my family’s condition.”
Naba Kumar Mandal is also a patient of silicosis. He adds, “elections are about false promises. For us, voting is a routine task. No matter who comes to power, things will not change for us.”
“I reach here by 8:45 a.m. and we start work by nine. By the time I am home, it is 7-7:30 in the evening,” says Madan Pal. ‘Here,’ is the tiny carrom board factory in Suraj Kund Sports Colony in Meerut city, Uttar Pradesh.
Karan, 32, who has been working here for 10 years, inspects each stick of wood and segregates those that are damaged and will be returned.
“It is not difficult to make a board, but it is not easy to make the coins glide on the playing surface.”
Lenindhasan, or Lenin– as he is called – and his friends, are trying to replace modern rice varieties and resist mono-cropping. Their plan is to restore lost diversity. And to germinate a rice revolution.
It's a different kind of revolution, led by another kind of Lenin.
Lenin cultivates 30 varieties of rice. He sells another 15 raised by fellow farmers. And he conserves 80 types of paddy seeds. All this, in his family’s six-acre farm in Tamil Nadu’s Tiruvanamalai district.
It seems as if he’s been farming and selling paddy for decades. But it’s only been six years.
Before he became a farmer, Lenin was a corporate employee in Chennai, with two degrees and a good salary.
Life has only become harder in the last 10 years (A thread)
India's poorest homes continue to rely on minor forest produce like mahua and tendu leaves, along with the assured Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee (MGNREGA) programme.
As they prepare for voting today in the General Elections 2024, Adivasi villagers here in Arattondi village say their lives have only become harder in the last 10 years...