India’s women farmers are finally being recognised. Will they ever own the land?
Maharashtra's Legislative Assembly unanimously passed the Women Farmers Empowerment Act on July 2, 2026, creating a formal "women farmer certificate" that establishes farmer identity independent of land title
The certificate grants access to credit, crop insurance and government subsidies without requiring the applicant's name to appear on land records, and provides a 30% reservation for women across state agricultural programmes
Gram sabhas and nagar panchayats can grant this recognition without requiring an individual application, and dedicated women farmers' assistance officers have been created at block and district level
The Act does not confer land ownership, inheritance rights, or the ability to sell or mortgage land, leaving women without a legal claim to land in disputes, divorce or distress sales
National Policy for Farmers, 2007 — Activity-Based Definition of "Farmer"
The National Policy for Farmers (2007), based on the recommendations of the National Commission on Farmers (constituted 2004, chaired by M.S. Swaminathan), was the first national-level policy document to define "farmer" by economic activity rather than land ownership — explicitly including women cultivators, tenants and agricultural labourers. It defines a farmer as a person actively engaged in growing crops or producing primary agricultural commodities, and separately recognises a woman farmer as one involved in agriculture "regardless of land ownership or marital status."
Key Details
- National Commission on Farmers constituted in 2004 under Dr M.S. Swaminathan; recommendations formed the basis of the 2007 policy
- The policy's activity-based definition (rather than title-based) is the conceptual precedent for Maharashtra's 2026 certificate mechanism
- M.S. Swaminathan had separately introduced the Women Farmers' Entitlements Bill in the Rajya Sabha in May 2012, which was never enacted at the national level but influenced state-level experiments
Maharashtra's women farmer certificate operationalises, nearly two decades later at the state level, the identity-without-ownership framework first articulated in the 2007 National Policy for Farmers.
Hindu Succession (Amendment) Act, 2005 — Equal Coparcenary Rights Including Agricultural Land
The Hindu Succession (Amendment) Act, 2005 amended the Hindu Succession Act, 1956 to make daughters coparceners by birth, giving them the same rights, liabilities and inheritance claims in joint family property as sons. Crucially, it also deleted Section 4(2) of the 1956 Act, which had earlier exempted agricultural land from these equal-inheritance provisions and left it subject to state-level tenurial laws — many of which favoured male heirs.
Key Details
- Pre-2005: Section 4(2) allowed states to apply their own (often discriminatory) tenurial succession laws to agricultural land, effectively excluding it from equal inheritance
- Post-2005: agricultural land is on par with all other property for inheritance purposes, giving Hindu women a statutory right to inherit farmland equal to their brothers
- Despite the legal change, implementation gaps persist — social pressure, lack of awareness, and administrative resistance mean many women still do not claim or receive their legal share, which is the deeper problem the Maharashtra Act also does not resolve
The 2005 amendment already gives women a legal right to inherit agricultural land; Maharashtra's 2026 Act does not add to or engage with that inheritance right — it creates a parallel, non-title-based certificate that leaves the underlying ownership gap (and its enforcement problem) untouched.
The Land Ownership Gender Gap and Its Policy Consequences (PM-KISAN as Example)
Because many welfare and credit schemes tie eligibility to land ownership records rather than actual cultivation activity, women who work land registered in male family members' names are structurally excluded from direct benefits — the exact problem Maharashtra's certificate is designed to bypass for state schemes.
Key Details
- Under PM-KISAN (a Central Sector Scheme), eligibility requires the beneficiary's name to appear on state land records as a cultivable landowner; tenant farmers, sharecroppers and non-titled cultivators (a category disproportionately including women) do not qualify directly
- Despite this, over 2.4 crore women farmers are covered under PM-KISAN as of 2026 — those who do hold land title in their own name
- Nationally, women form nearly 60% of India's agricultural workforce but hold fewer than 15% of land titles; in Maharashtra specifically, 82% of rural female workers are engaged in agriculture (versus 58% of rural men), yet women hold only about 15.5% of operational farmland
- Uttarakhand's 2021 co-ownership amendment, affecting an estimated 3.5 million women, is a comparable state-level land-rights intervention, distinct from Maharashtra's identity-only certificate approach
Maharashtra's certificate sidesteps the land-record eligibility barrier for state-level credit, insurance and subsidy access, but because it does not touch land title, it cannot make women eligible for title-linked Central schemes like PM-KISAN, nor does it protect them in inheritance, divorce or distress-sale disputes.
- Women Farmers Empowerment Act passed by Maharashtra Legislative Assembly: July 2, 2026 (unanimous)
- Reservation for women under state agricultural programmes: 30%
- Women's share of India's agricultural workforce: ~60%; share of land titles held: <15%
- Maharashtra-specific: 82% of rural female workers vs 58% of rural male workers engaged in agriculture; women hold ~15.5% of operational farmland
- Hindu Succession (Amendment) Act, 2005: made daughters coparceners by birth; deleted Section 4(2), bringing agricultural land under equal inheritance rules
- National Policy for Farmers, 2007: based on National Commission on Farmers (2004) recommendations under M.S. Swaminathan
- Comparable state precedent: Uttarakhand's 2021 land co-ownership amendment, affecting ~3.5 million women
- PM-KISAN coverage: over 2.18–2.4 crore women farmers among ~9.44 crore total beneficiaries (2026 instalment data)