Indian Women's Land Right Workshop concludes at Bhopal

On 11th October, 2006, CWLR, a network or organisations working on land and resource rights for women, concluded a two day capacity building workshop. About 45 participants across the country, attended the workshop hosted by IWID Bhopal, CWLR member and women's resource centre.

At the closing session of the "Workshop on Realisation of Right to Land and Resources of Women" jointly organised by IWID Bhopal and Saathi all for Partnerships, participants from various nodal organisations and grassroots women's collectives evaluated the inputs they had received in the two days.

"What I liked was the simple language" said Sachi of ChotaNagpur Vikas Sangathan, Jharkhand. "Issues, both practical and legal, were demystified and so it was easy for all to understand" she said. The basis for the workshop was laid by Ilina Singh of Rupantar, Chattisgarh through her presentation on the opportunities and challenges confronting the movements for women's land rights and by Shiva Kumar of Shakti through his sharing on realisation of women's land rights in TamilNadu.

At the closing session of the "Workshop on Realisation of Right to Land and Resources of Women" jointly organised by IWID Bhopal and Saathi all for Partnerships, participants from various nodal organisations and grassroots women's collectives evaluated the inputs they had received in the two days.

Some participants said that they had been advocating for rights from an activists perspective; the workshop had taught them how to approach the issue in a logical manner, using data and legal knowledge to address the issue of women's right to land. The legal knowledge and inputs provided by Rashmi Katyani of Ranchi had helped greatly in this.

Seema Khot, executive member of CWLR and independent consultant from Pune, shared a ten step methodology for resource mapping, which is a way to raise citizen's awareness and knowledge regarding the distribution, utilisation, ownership and control over land. Resource mapping can help village women to understand and document land use and formulate ways to facilitate better distribution and utilisation with fairness irrespective of caste, religion or gender. "I best liked the different strategies that were offered for dealing with the village Patwari", said Subahua of Gram Sudhar Samiti, Sidhi district, Madhya Pradesh.

In the session on Village Knowledge Centres, Geetha Bhardwaj of OneWorld South Asia New Delhi, discussed ways in which Information Communication Technology (ICT)can help to strengthen the campaign. This led participants to debate on whether technologies are truly beneficial or just a ruse to further capitalist, globalised, brutally marketised interests. One participant was already part of a program to set up one hundred Village Knowledge Centres with help of the Ministry for Panchayati Raj and Social Development and NASSCOM. There was scepticism on the issue of public-private partnerships; so while some participants were willing to consider village knowledge centres as spaces for women to access critical information resources, it was felt that ownership should be with women and women's organisations, and there was cynicism about involving NGOs, the government, public and private sector.

Phalguni and Seema of The Working Group on Women and Land (WGWLO) shared their experience of identifying and meeting the capacity building needs of rural women's groups. The sessions were followed by an interactive session where participants together identified the training needs of the group members, and planned the network's participation in the upcoming national and international events, namely the ISF and WSF. The workshop is followed by a General Body Meeting of CWLR.