A Dalit Women’s Collective Is Fighting for the Land it Toils on in Gujarat Aarefa Johari December 26, 2021 https://janataweekly.org/a-dalit-womens-collective-is-fighting-for-the-land-it-toils-on-in-gujarat/
In the past 12 years, led by Baluben, this group of 51 Dalit women from Vautha, in Ahmedabad district’s Dholka block, had converted around 36 acres of the government’s “non-useful” wasteland into fertile farms that yield two crops a year. The land has become a precious source of livelihood for their families, and 72-year-old Baluben’s only dream is for her band of Dalit women to get formal ownership over it.
The case of the Dalit women’s collective in Vautha, however, highlights that the opposite can also be true: several acres of wasteland are clearly available, with the land evidently fertile, but the state seems unwilling to formally distribute it to families in need. Instead, government officials that this reporter met, claimed that land for the Santhani scheme has been scarce in the state for over a decade.
A study by rural economist Manjula Laxman in six Gujarat districts found that between 1960 and 2015, 43% of Dalits who had been allocated land acquired through the land ceiling law did not get possession of the property. Among those who did, 58% took more than five years to get possession of the land after it was officially allocated to them.