The Invisible Cultivators, Land, Credit, and the Struggle to Recognise India’s Women Farmers in the International Year of the Woman Farmer
She rises before dawn, walks kilometres to fetch water, spends the day bending over rice paddies or cotton fields, and returns home to cook, clean, and care for children and elders. She knows the soil, the seeds, the seasons. She can identify pests, diagnose crop diseases, and predict rainfall from the behaviour of birds. She has spent her entire life in agriculture, learning from her mother and grandmother before her. She is, by any functional definition, a farmer.
Yet when the government compiles its lists of beneficiaries for the Pradhan Mantri Kisan Samman Nidhi (PM-KISAN), her name is rarely on them. When she seeks a loan to buy seeds and fertiliser, the bank demands collateral she does not possess. When drought destroys her harvest, compensation is paid to the person whose name appears on the land title—her husband, her father-in-law, her brother. She works the land, but she does not own it. She feeds the nation, but the nation does not recognise her as a farmer.
This is the foundational injustice that the United Nations’ declaration of 2026 as the International Year of the Woman Farmer seeks to illuminate. It is not merely a symbolic gesture; it is a global reckoning with the systematic invisibility of women’s agricultural labour. In India, where women constitute more than 40 per cent of the agricultural workforce but hold only 14 per cent of land titles and account for just 12 per cent of operated area, the gap between contribution and recognition is not merely unjust; it is economically irrational and developmentally self-defeating.
The authors of the accompanying analysis, B.K. Singhal and Harsh Ranjan, identify three critical gender gaps that must be addressed if India is to harness what they term the “women farmers’ dividend”: land ownership, access to credit, and participation in collectives. These gaps are not discrete; they are mutually reinforcing. The absence of land titles excludes women from institutional credit, which requires collateral. The absence of credit prevents women from investing in productivity-enhancing inputs and technologies. The absence of collective bargaining power leaves individual women farmers vulnerable to exploitative buyers and intermediaries. Each gap compounds the others, trapping women in a cycle of productivity poverty that constrains not only their own livelihoods but the output of the entire agricultural sector.
The International Year of the Woman Farmer is an opportunity—not to celebrate what has been achieved, which remains woefully inadequate, but to accelerate what must be done. It is a moment for policy innovation, institutional reform, and cultural transformation. It is a test of whether India can translate its rhetorical commitment to gender equality into the concrete, measurable changes that women farmers have been demanding for decades.
The Ownership Deficit: Why Land Titles Matter
The exclusion of women from land ownership is the primary structural barrier to their economic empowerment in agriculture. It is not merely a matter of formal title; it is a matter of substantive rights that flow from ownership.
The official definition of “farmer” in government programmes is, in practice, tied to the record of rights. Those whose names appear on land titles are eligible for subsidies, insurance, compensation, and credit. Those whose names do not—regardless of the labour they invest, the knowledge they possess, or the output they generate—are excluded. The consequences are stark. Women constitute only 23 per cent of direct beneficiaries under PM-KISAN, despite being more than 40 per cent of the agricultural workforce. They are systematically denied access to interest subvention on farm loans, crop insurance, subsidised inputs, and disaster compensation.
This is not merely an administrative oversight; it is a structural feature of a land governance system that has historically privileged male ownership. Inheritance laws, patrilocal residence patterns, and bureaucratic biases have combined to produce a landscape in which women are workers on land they will never own. The Agriculture Census of 2015-16 documented that women held only 14 per cent of land holdings and 12 per cent of operated area. These figures have improved marginally in subsequent years, but the pace of change is glacial.
The solution is not merely to exhort families to voluntarily transfer land to women. It is to embed gender equity into the very architecture of land governance. The authors’ recommendation that schemes and programmes centred on the record of rights include a “built-in gender component” is precisely the kind of systemic intervention required. This could take the form of mandatory joint titling for all new land allocations, incentivised joint titling for existing holdings through reduced stamp duties or registration fees, and proactive outreach to inform women of their inheritance rights.
Joint titling—the inclusion of both spouses’ names on land titles—is not a radical demand. It is already practised in several states and has been shown to increase women’s agency, investment in land improvement, and household welfare. Yet its adoption remains sporadic and incomplete. The International Year of the Woman Farmer should be the occasion for a national mission on joint land titling, with clear targets, dedicated resources, and accountable implementation.
The Credit Crunch: Collateral, Capacity, and the Financial Inclusion Gap
The second gender gap—access to institutional credit—is a direct consequence of the first. Commercial banks and cooperative lending institutions require collateral for agricultural loans. For most women farmers, the only significant asset they could pledge is land, and that land is not in their names. They are thus excluded from the formal credit system and forced to rely on informal lenders who charge exorbitant interest rates and often extract usurious terms.
This is not merely a matter of individual hardship; it is a constraint on agricultural productivity. Women farmers, denied access to formal credit, cannot invest in high-yielding seeds, chemical fertilisers, irrigation equipment, or mechanised tools. They continue to rely on traditional, low-productivity methods, their output constrained not by their skill or effort but by their inability to access capital. The result is a massive, unmeasured loss of potential agricultural output—a drag on the entire sector.
The authors identify two complementary approaches to addressing the credit crunch. The first is capacity building: improving financial literacy and awareness among women farmers so that they understand their rights, the products available to them, and the procedures for accessing credit. Institutions like NABARD are already working in this space through Financial Literacy and Awareness Programmes, and the RBI’s Depositor Education and Awareness Fund provides additional resources. These efforts are valuable and should be expanded.
But financial literacy, however necessary, is not sufficient. Women farmers do not lack understanding of how credit works; they lack the collateral that credit requires. The second approach, therefore, must be credit intensification through targeted, collateral-free lending. This requires a fundamental shift in how banks evaluate creditworthiness for women farmers. Instead of demanding land titles as collateral, lenders should be encouraged to accept alternative forms of security: group guarantees, crop insurance assignments, cash flow projections, and demonstrated repayment capacity.
The government’s skill development programmes—Krishi Vigyan Kendras, Rural Self Employment Training Institutes, the Pradhan Mantri Kaushal Vikas Yojana—can play a role in this transition. By certifying women farmers’ technical competencies and linking certification to credit eligibility, these programmes can help substitute human capital for physical capital. A woman who has completed advanced training in sustainable agriculture practices is a better credit risk than her landless status would suggest. The credit system must be reformed to recognise this.
The Collectivisation Deficit: Power in Numbers
The third gender gap identified by the authors is the limited participation of women farmers in collectives. Individual women farmers, operating small plots with limited resources and no title to their land, are atomised and vulnerable. They face buyers who collude to suppress prices, input suppliers who overcharge for poor-quality products, and extension officers who direct their advice to male farmers. They have no bargaining power, no economies of scale, no collective voice.
Collectivisation is the antidote to atomisation. Farmer Producer Organisations (FPOs), cooperatives, and self-help groups enable women farmers to pool their resources, aggregate their output, and negotiate from a position of collective strength. An FPO of 500 women farmers can invest in shared processing equipment, contract directly with large buyers, and demand fair prices for their produce. It can provide its members with access to credit, inputs, and technical advice. It can advocate for policy changes that benefit its members.
The government has recognised the potential of FPOs and has set ambitious targets for their promotion. What is needed now is a deliberate focus on women-led and women-focused FPOs. This is not merely a matter of ensuring that women are represented in mixed-gender collectives; it is about creating dedicated institutions that address the specific constraints women face. Women-only FPOs can be more responsive to members’ needs, more comfortable spaces for participation, and more effective vehicles for women’s economic empowerment.
The authors’ call to “harness the women farmers’ dividend” in the International Year of the Woman Farmer is a recognition that collectivisation is not only a tool for poverty alleviation but a strategy for productivity enhancement. Women farmers are not a marginal constituency to be accommodated; they are a potent economic force whose full potential has been systematically suppressed. Unlocking that potential requires not charity but investment, not protection but empowerment, not symbolism but institutional transformation.
The Definitional Debate: Who Counts as a Farmer?
Beneath the three gender gaps lies a more fundamental question: Who is recognised as a farmer?
The official definition, embedded in administrative practice, is tautologically linked to land ownership. A farmer is someone who owns land. This definition excludes the vast majority of women who cultivate land they do not own. It excludes tenants, sharecroppers, and agricultural labourers. It excludes, in short, the very people who perform most of the labour of Indian agriculture.
This definition is not neutral; it is a political choice with profound distributional consequences. By defining farmers as landowners, the state systematically excludes women, Dalits, Adivasis, and landless labourers from the benefits of agricultural policy. It perpetuates the very inequalities that the Constitution mandates the state to abolish. It is, in effect, a form of structural discrimination that operates through the apparently neutral mechanism of administrative classification.
The authors’ recommendation to include a “built-in gender component” in schemes centred on the record of rights is a step toward correcting this discrimination. But it does not address the more fundamental problem: the record of rights itself is a document of exclusion. It records ownership, not cultivation. It privileges property rights over labour rights. It encodes the historical dispossession of women, lower castes, and indigenous communities.
A truly transformative approach would decouple farmer recognition from land ownership. It would define farmers as those who cultivate land, regardless of whether they own it. It would create a parallel system of cultivation records that document who actually works the land, who makes decisions about cropping patterns, who invests labour and capital in production. It would extend the benefits of agricultural policy—subsidies, insurance, credit, compensation—to all those who meet this functional definition.
This is not a utopian demand; it is a practical reform that has been implemented in various forms in different contexts. It requires political will, administrative capacity, and the willingness to challenge entrenched interests. The International Year of the Woman Farmer provides the political momentum; what remains is the courage to act.
Conclusion: The Dividend and Its Distribution
The concept of a “women farmers’ dividend” is deliberately chosen. It reframes gender equality in agriculture from a matter of social justice to one of economic efficiency. It asserts that the exclusion of women from land ownership, credit, and collectives is not merely unfair; it is wasteful. It deprives the agricultural sector of the full productive potential of its workforce. It depresses output, constrains growth, and perpetuates poverty.
The dividend metaphor also implies a distributional claim. A dividend is a share of profits distributed to those who have contributed to their generation. Women farmers have contributed their labour, their knowledge, their care, and their resilience to Indian agriculture for generations. They have received, in return, invisibility, exclusion, and poverty. The dividend is not a gift; it is compensation for value already created.
The International Year of the Woman Farmer is an opportunity to begin paying that dividend. It will not be paid in a single year; the arrears are too large and the structural barriers too entrenched. But it can be the year in which the direction of travel decisively shifts. It can be the year in which joint land titling becomes national policy. The year in which collateral-free credit for women farmers becomes the norm rather than the exception. The year in which women-led FPOs receive the investment and support they need to scale. The year in which the definition of “farmer” is finally expanded to include those who actually farm.
The authors conclude with a call to “harness the women farmers’ dividend in IYWF 2026.” This is not a passive plea; it is an active demand. It calls upon policymakers, administrators, bankers, and civil society to recognise that the invisibility of women farmers is not an inevitable feature of agricultural life but a policy choice that can be unmade. It insists that the tools to close the gender gaps are available—joint titling, targeted credit, women-led collectives, expanded definitions. What has been lacking is not knowledge but will.
The women of rural India have waited generations for this recognition. They have fed the nation, sustained its rural economy, and preserved its agricultural heritage. They have done so without titles, without credit, without collectives, and without recognition. They have done so because they had no choice. The International Year of the Woman Farmer declares that this is no longer acceptable.
The dividend is ready to be claimed. The question is whether India is ready to pay it.
Q&A Section
Q1: What are the three critical gender gaps in Indian agriculture identified by the authors, and how are they mutually reinforcing?
A1: The three critical gaps are land ownership, access to credit, and participation in collectives. They are mutually reinforcing in a vicious cycle. First, land ownership deficit: women constitute over 40 per cent of the agricultural workforce but hold only 14 per cent of land titles and 12 per cent of operated area. This exclusion from ownership is the foundational barrier. Second, credit access deficit: because institutional credit requires collateral, and women lack land titles, they are systematically excluded from formal credit systems. They cannot access loans for seeds, fertilisers, equipment, or irrigation improvements. Third, collectivisation deficit: individual women farmers, operating small plots with no title and no credit, are atomised and vulnerable. They cannot achieve economies of scale, bargain effectively with buyers, or advocate for policy changes. Each gap compounds the others. Lack of land titles excludes women from credit; lack of credit prevents productivity-enhancing investments; lack of collective organisation leaves women isolated and powerless; and this isolation reinforces their exclusion from land ownership. Breaking the cycle requires simultaneous, coordinated interventions across all three gaps, not sequential, piecemeal reforms.
Q2: How does the official definition of “farmer” in government schemes and administrative practice systematically exclude women from agricultural benefits, and what reform do the authors implicitly recommend?
A2: The official definition of “farmer” is, in practice, tautologically linked to land ownership. Those whose names appear on the record of rights are eligible for subsidies, insurance, credit, and compensation. Those who cultivate land they do not own—the vast majority of women farmers—are excluded. The consequences are stark: women constitute only 23 per cent of direct beneficiaries under PM-KISAN, despite being over 40 per cent of the agricultural workforce. They are denied access to interest subvention on farm loans, crop insurance, subsidised inputs, and disaster compensation. This is not administrative oversight but structural discrimination embedded in the classification system itself.
The authors implicitly recommend decoupling farmer recognition from land ownership. Instead of defining farmers as landowners, the state should define farmers as those who cultivate land, regardless of ownership status. This would require creating a parallel system of cultivation records documenting who actually works the land, makes cropping decisions, and invests labour and capital. Benefits would then flow to cultivators, not merely titleholders. This reform would extend recognition and resources to tenants, sharecroppers, agricultural labourers, and the millions of women who farm land they do not own. It is not a utopian demand but a practical reform implemented in various forms in different contexts, requiring political will and administrative capacity.
Q3: What is the relationship between land ownership and access to institutional credit, and what two complementary approaches do the authors propose to address the credit gap?
A3: The relationship is direct and causal. Commercial banks and cooperative lending institutions require collateral for agricultural loans. For most women farmers, the only significant asset they could pledge is land, and that land is not in their names. They are thus excluded from the formal credit system and forced to rely on informal lenders charging exorbitant interest rates. This exclusion constrains agricultural productivity, as women cannot invest in high-yielding seeds, fertilisers, irrigation equipment, or mechanised tools.
The authors propose two complementary approaches. First, capacity building: improving financial literacy and awareness so women understand their rights, available products, and application procedures. Institutions like NABARD and RBI’s DEAF fund are already working in this space. Second, credit intensification through targeted, collateral-free lending: shifting how banks evaluate creditworthiness for women farmers. Instead of demanding land titles, lenders should accept alternative security forms: group guarantees, crop insurance assignments, cash flow projections, demonstrated repayment capacity. The government’s skill development programmes (KVKs, RSETIs, PMKVY) can support this transition by certifying women farmers’ technical competencies and linking certification to credit eligibility. A woman with advanced training in sustainable agriculture is a better credit risk than her landless status suggests. The credit system must be reformed to recognise this.
Q4: Why is collectivisation through Farmer Producer Organisations (FPOs) and cooperatives particularly important for women farmers, and what does the authors’ call for “women-led and women-focused” FPOs imply?
A4: Collectivisation is the antidote to atomisation. Individual women farmers, operating small plots with limited resources and no land title, are isolated and vulnerable. They face colluding buyers who suppress prices, input suppliers who overcharge for poor-quality products, and extension officers who direct advice to male farmers. They have no bargaining power, no economies of scale, no collective voice.
FPOs and cooperatives enable women to pool resources, aggregate output, and negotiate from collective strength. An FPO of 500 women farmers can invest in shared processing equipment, contract directly with large buyers, and demand fair prices. It can provide members with credit, inputs, and technical advice. It can advocate for policy changes benefiting its members.
The call for “women-led and women-focused” FPOs implies that gender composition and governance matter. It is not enough to ensure women are represented in mixed-gender collectives, where male members may dominate decision-making and resources may be allocated inequitably. Women-only or women-majority FPOs, led by women, can be more responsive to members’ needs, create more comfortable spaces for participation, and serve as more effective vehicles for economic empowerment. This is not separatism but strategic institutional design. The government’s ambitious FPO promotion targets must include dedicated goals for women-led FPOs, with tailored support for their unique challenges and opportunities.
Q5: What is the “women farmers’ dividend,” and why do the authors frame it as compensation for value already created rather than a gift or subsidy?
A5: The “women farmers’ dividend” is the economic gain that would accrue to the agricultural sector and the national economy if the structural barriers excluding women farmers from land ownership, credit, and collectives were dismantled. It is not a speculative projection but a recovery of value already lost through systematic exclusion. Women farmers have contributed their labour, knowledge, care, and resilience to Indian agriculture for generations. They have received, in return, invisibility, exclusion, and poverty. The dividend is not charity; it is compensation for value already created and unjustly withheld.
This framing is politically and ethically significant. It reframes gender equality in agriculture from a matter of social justice to one of economic efficiency and reparative justice. It asserts that the exclusion of women from land ownership, credit, and collectives is not merely unfair; it is wasteful. It deprives the agricultural sector of the full productive potential of its workforce, depressing output, constraining growth, and perpetuating poverty. The dividend is not a gift from the state or a subsidy to be dispensed; it is payment of arrears for labour already performed and value already generated.
This framing also implies obligation. Those who have benefited from women’s unpaid and undercompensated labour—landowners, intermediaries, consumers, the state—have accumulated a debt. The International Year of the Woman Farmer is an opportunity to begin repaying that debt through policy reforms that transfer assets, expand access, and recognise contribution. The dividend is not a future promise but a present claim. The question is whether India has the will to honour it.
