Eleventh Five Year Plan

Towards Women’s Agency and Child Rights 193work from their own homes, a home is a productiveand wealth-generating asset for millions of low-incomewomen. There is well-documented evidence to showthat in both the urban and rural context, women’sownership of housing offers a vital form of securityagainst poverty and enhances associated economic andsocial status. There are three main sources of access toland: family, State, and market. The challenge in theEleventh Plan is to tap all these three sources. With theamendment of the Hindu Succession Act we have alreadytaken the first step towards enhancing women’sclaims through inheritance. This should be strengthenedby enacting gender-equal laws, adopting vigilancein recording women’s claims, increasing legal awareness,and providing legal aid. All housing providedby the government during the Eleventh Plan shouldeither be half in the name of the woman in the householdor in the single name of the woman. Single women,widows, and women in difficult circumstances will begiven priority. Finally, the Eleventh Plan agenda willstrive to support women’s access via banks by developinga system of reaching housing finance at reasonablerates to poor women. This will require provision ofsubsidized credit, changes in land tenure policies,and in norms for mortgages and housing loans.ENSURING FOOD SECURITY6.42 During the Eleventh Plan attempts will be madeto strengthen the PDS system and revise BPL censusnorms to ensure that women in vulnerable situations,particularly widows, single women, internally displacedwomen, and women in conflict situations are covered.6.43 The agrarian crisis is taking a heavy toll on women,with farmer suicides leaving women behind to takecare of family and indebtedness. The Eleventh Plan willhave a comprehensive package of inputs from varioussectors like agriculture, rural development, Khadiand Village Industries Commission (KVIC), MoWCD,along with micro-credit facilities, and capacity buildinginputs for women from affected families.Self-help Groups (SHGs)6.44 While strengthening SHG initiatives, policies andschemes the Eleventh Plan will simultaneously increasewomen’s awareness, bargaining power, literacy, health,vocational, and entrepreneurial skills. It will prioritizetraining, capacity-building inputs, and the creation ofbackward-forward linkages, which are essential togenerate sustainable livelihood opportunities. Giventhe scale of the phenomenon, there is a need to reviewthe SHG interventions and ground realities to determinehow SHGs may better serve the interests of poorwomen, and suggest changes required in overall SHGpolicy frameworks. The Eleventh Plan recognizes theimportance of this issue and proposes a HLC to conducta review of SHG-related policies and programmes.ENGINEERING SOCIAL EMPOWERMENTHealth6.45 Health care access remains low for many women,especially the poor and marginalized who suffer frommultiple exclusions and stigmatized groups such as sexworkers and women with alternative sexualities. TheBox 6.4Ordinary Women Who Did the ExtraordinaryMaking women partners in their own health care has proved to be an effective strategy for ensuring good health and wellbeingof the society in general. This is what the experience from places like Gadchiroli (Nagpur, Maharashtra), Ongna (Udaipur,Rajasthan), Khajrana (Indore, MP), and Ganiyari (Bilaspur, Chattisgarh) demonstrates. In Gadchiroli, ordinary women,most of them class 5 or 6 pass, have managed to reduce the NMR by half. They have also managed to bring about anattitudinal change. Women now get better nutrition during pregnancy. Many unhealthy and unsafe practices traditionallycarried out during childbirth have been curtailed. In Ongna, a cadre of Swasthyakarmis have spread the message of goodhealth and sanitation. They have led to increased coverage of the Directly Observed Treatment Short (DOTS) courseprogramme. In small forest fringe villages in the Achanakmaar National Park in Chhattisgarh, illiterate and semi-literateBaiga, Gond, and other tribal women proudly flaunt their satchels replete with medicines like chloroquine, amoxicin, pictorialcharts explaining their use, breath counters for pneumonia detection, dressing for wounds, and pregnancy kits. Thesewomen have managed to provide much needed medical relief to the local population. In Khajrana, in Indore, slum womenhave got together under the Rehbar Society to ensure that slum dwellers get access to medical aid and medicines.