the liberalization of the land-lease market remains an obstacle to the rapid enactment of this law. The initiative behind this unified land administration law is most welcome, since the complexity of the existing legislative framework, inherited as it is from diverse pieces of legislation designed to bring together quite different revenue systems, accounts for much of the wide scope for evasion of the law in practice.

# 2.4 Women's **access to land**

The survey of the legislative framework in Orissa confirms that 'land reform policies have been based on the principle of redistributive justice and on arguments regarding efficiency (land to the tiller, fixation of ceilings, prevention of fragmentation, etc.); but on neither count are gender inequalities taken into account' (Agarwal, 1994: 216). No law has dealt specifically with increasing women's access to land. Rights to land for Hindu women are according to the Hindu Succession Act 1956 which provides for daughters, widow and mother of a Hindu man dying intestate to inherit property equally with his sons. In practice, however, significant and persistent gaps exist between women's legal rights and their actual ownership of land, and between the limited ownership rights women do enjoy and their effective control over land (Agarwal 1994).

For example, the Orissa Land Reforms Act 1960 does not mention the order of devolution at all. So whether the devolution of tenancy land will be according to personal law, or would follow a different order of devolution, is open to interpretation. Gender inequalities in OLRA have also arisen from enactments relating to the fixation of ceilings<sup>6</sup> on two counts, namely:

- **_the_** _definition of 'family':_ Article 37 of the Act defines a family as the individual and his/her spouse and their children, whether major or minor. Later the law was amended to include married daughters whereas a childless widow is not considered to be a member of her deceased husband's family (Orissa Land Reforms Manual, 1997: A67-A69).

- _recognising only_ **_men's_** _and_ **_not women's independent land rights:_** Women's rights to land are most often subsumed under those of her husband. A woman does not count as an owner in her own right, which leaves her disproportionately vulnerable to losing her land (See Box 4).

# Box **4: Constraints on women's access to land**

In a 1986 court case in Sambalpur, the govemment Revenue Officer, in assessing ceiling surplus land, aggregated the land of both spouses as 'family land', including land separately registered in the wife's name and inherited from her father. But the Revenue Officer gave notice only to the husband as the 'person interested'. The two men settled the matter between them, and the wife's land was declared surplus. The wife appealed the order to the High Court, asking that her separate land be excluded from the ceiling surplus, on the ground that since the land concerned was her separate property she was the 'person interested' to whom prior notice should have been given. This, she argued, would have given her a chance to ask the Revenue Officer to let her retain her land and instead declare some part of her husband's land as surplus. Her appeal was accepted by the High Court under the constitutional principle of 'natural justice.' _Source: All India Reporter (1986), 'Kunjalata Purohit v. Tahsildar, Sambalpur and others', Orissa 115, quoted in Agarwal (1994)_

- 6 A ceiling is fixed in relation to a family unit consisting of up to five members. Additional land is allowed to be held by families of over five members, subjec **t** o a specified maximum. OLRA, as amended in 1974, has fixed a ceiling of 10 standard acres for a family of five which can increase by two standard acres for each member in excess of five, up to a maximum of 18 standard acres.

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