Land Grabbing in Common Property Resources: How Women Social Positions Intersect Access to Natural Resources

Introduction

Land is an imperative source of culture, wealth, food and social life. Land rights could be described as rights to use, control and transfer a portion of land and its resources (Food and Agricultural Organisation [FAO], 2002). Land rights provide gender equality, property rights, housing, food security, development and poverty reduction through the parameters of land use, access and ownership (Gilbert, 2013; International Land Coalition, 2003; United Nations Human Settlements Programme, 2008). Land and land rights have been thrust as a key indicator globally for accomplishing the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development encompasses land-related objectives under SDGs 1, 2, 5, 11 and 15 (thereby making land a significant component to achieve other SDGs). ¹ Academia and activists in the Global North and South, working on land rights, are particularly interested in understanding how land grabbing intrinsically leads to exclusion of local communities from access to natural resources, introducing privatisation of these resources and resulting in human right violations (Borras et al., 2011; Gonda, 2019). The crudeness and privileges of present-day global capitalism have become more prominent through the practice of hostile methods of accretion by depriving original possessors (Harvey, 2003; Swyngedouw, 2005), thus generating disparate social relations in production in capitalism between those who have control and those who are deprived (Andreasson, 2006).

Land grabbing or encroachment/illegal occupation is a common phenomenon taking place at various scales—large or small. Land grabs reflect development through capitalist encroachment of land. Whether aided and abetted by the state or not, it is, in some ways, independent of the state. Capital materiality and economic compulsion to acquire land in India have led to displacement for fulfilling purposes of industrial and resource extraction along with realty, infra and special economic zone (SEZ) parks paired with ecological parks. This has promoted expansion of capital accumulation and control, capitalising on rent-seeking, land speculation and production of goods and services (D’Costa, 2016). Hence, land capturing affects the politics of control and denial of property (enclosures), power and sociability, described in the capitalistic mode of development (Jahnavi & Satpathy, 2021). Motives and magnitude of land grabbing have changed globally over the decades (Peluso & Lund, 2011). However, despite numerous discourses on land grabbing (see Baviskar, 1995; Borras & Franco, 2013; Borras et al., 2011; Harvey, 2003; Levien, 2015; Luxemburg, 2003; Patnaik, 2008; Sanyal, 2007; Zoomers, 2010), its prevalence in some form is visible in all societies and economies as the occupation and barricading of resources with the intent of capital justified as ‘crucial cost for development’ (Adnan, 2013; Chakravorty, 2013).

The prerequisite for development and national priority of industrial and big river valley projects is cited as the validation in post-colonial era, while depriving the local and indigenous population of their traditional livelihoods, local ecosystems and ancestral land worship (Gidwani, 2008). An analogy can be drawn between displacement policies and depriving peasants and indigenous tribal populations of their land and intergenerational resources for mining and forest facilities, and the historical accumulation through land grabs (dispossession, displacement and migration), paving the way for adverse spillover, allowing for proletarianisation to thrive (D’Costa, 2016). With economic restructuring, India saw a percentage spike in the capturing of land after the 1990s (Levien, 2015). It is estimated that anywhere from 13 to 18 million families in rural India are landless (Working Group on Human Rights in India and the UN, 2012, p. 11). Due to agricultural land being occupied by business and state interests, the dislocation of these rural wage labourers is inevitable. Though land acquisition is regulated, it is highly subject to market influences. The state has the power to exercise ‘eminent domain’ in confiscating land from possessors and cultivators, when and where required, irrespective of compensation. This results in a ripple effect wherein not only are the cultivators physically deprived and displaced, but the marginal and small landholders and the landless rural wagers dependent on medium and large farmers also lose their livelihood. Alternative uses of agricultural or forested land for urban industrial projects, infrastructure development and productive purposes such as factories, SEZs and land inundated by dams are the main causes of dispossession and displacement. It is critical to note that the momentum of land acquisition in present times is directed towards capitalist expansion without fundamentally providing any source of income for the displaced. The primary tools for this land acquisition are extensive indebtedness of cultivators and the concept of ‘eminent domain’ applied by the state (D’Costa, 2016). Paradoxically, while emphasising minimum interventions from the state, neoliberalism demands strong state mediation to facilitate the neoliberal practices of land use and development (Tasan-Kok & Baeten, 2012).

However, land grabs have been a global phenomenon since colonialism. Gidwani’s (2008) study on Lewa Patels, a dominant affluent caste in central Gujarat, traces how the clan consolidated as a corporate entity under the colonial rule. As the colonial land settlement policies favoured certain subjects, this particular group eventually organised themselves under the caste name Patel, facilitated by their historical and geographic recognition through class, gender and political relations. ² Thus, historically, as the British preferred some caste groups for land allocation and revenue collection, caste exclusions over land contributed enormously to the historical land grabs in India (Gidwani, 2008).

Thus, castes like the Patels of central Gujarat, even post-independence, maintain their position through capital accumulation. They are capitalist farmers and entrepreneurs who have wealth, technology, credit and social status to access CPRs like groundwater for agriculture by forming tube well companies. On the other hand, disadvantaged and marginalised groups like Dalits and Adivasi, not having access to such resources, suffered the denial of opportunity to equally share the agrarian progress of Gujarat (Dubash, 2002; Gidwani, 2008). The ‘bullock capitalists’ or large landholding farmers predominantly comprise the farmers’ lobby. They are organised on the basis of caste so as to protect their interests (Rudolph & Rudolph, 1987) with minimal concern for small and marginal farmers or agricultural labourers who comprise primarily the Adivasi or Dalit groups. ³ It is, however, unjust to presume that capitalism undermines and seeks to destroy the caste system internally through drastically altering the agrarian order (Prasad, 2008). However, it can be concluded that land grabs in the past were created over casteist exclusions, which continued in some form or the other post-independence through new forms of capital accumulation. Longitudinal research from the 1950s reflects how caste is responsible for disproportionate access to different prospects of irrigated agriculture (Epstein et al., 1998; Lanjouw & Stern, 1998). Production increase due to technology benefitted the cultivating caste during the 1960s–1980s period (Green Revolution) frequently exploiting the Dalits (Breman, 1974; Harriss, 1982).

Present-day India is still witness to the ‘upper’ castes being affluent and wielding monetary power over land, building, finances, etc., absolutely and proportionately, whereas the ‘lower’ castes primarily contribute as wage labourers to the economy (Mosse, 2018). Caste is a community or cultural identity that is a means of trustworthy business networking, contributing to the strength of Indian democracy (Mosse, 2018; Natrajan, 2012). Caste dynamics in the agrarian order can be comprehended only by bearing in mind the different historical perspectives on power and management over land and reform, urban proximity, caste demography and caste–political mobilisation (Lanjouw & Rao, 2011).

Conversely, at the micro level, land grabs supervene different forms and magnitude. As defined by Jodha (1986), Bromley (1989) and Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD, 1997), common property resources (CPRs) are natural resources owned and maintained jointly by a local community instead of individuals. Grabbing of land, particularly rural CPRs, have various implications for different communities dependent on the land. In India, land grabbing has repercussions on the overlapping regional structures and power parameters of social identities such as gender, caste, indigeneity, region and religion (Jahnavi & Satpathy, 2021). Its implication encompasses a larger extent of exploitation of natural resources like water/grassland for livestock/human–agrarian consumption, adversely affecting the vulnerable communities (Mehta et al., 2012). For example, in rural India, CPR lands are grabbed by the locally powerful dominant caste—which leads to the denial of CPRs to the marginalised groups (Mehta, 2005). ⁴

In this article, I examine micro-level land grabs through a case study of land grab of CPRs—gauchar (pastureland)—at the village level by the upper-caste community. I explore how the consequences of land and resource rights impact women in diverse ways, especially the Adivasi (tribal) social group, and in particular the women belonging to the Dalit (former untouchables) community. It is extremely relevant to examine in the Indian context due to the varying power relations between women belonging to different castes and classes. This has serious repercussions due to structural inequalities in access to natural resources (Velaskar, 2016). In most of the contemporary literature, the discourse on land grab is seen as a mechanism to enhance state power within democratic governance (Gonda, 2019; White et al., 2012). However, there is disparity in literature on the discourse on domestic micro-level land grabs and natural resource management centred around gender. Hence, a study of intersection of gender, with other organisational hierarchies such as caste, ethnic group and class, is necessary. Using the intersectionality framework, this article aims to investigate the way land grabs have altered the gender relations/roles in a small rural community in Gujarat. My aim through this article is to employ the intersectionality perspective to examine impacts of micro-level land grabs, specifically in the case of gauchar land, and contribute to the discussions on natural resource management, centred around gender and caste. As much of the discourse on CPRs is dominated by common property theorists, this study utilises the intersectionality lens and adds to the discussion on the implications of land grab of CPRs on women belonging to different social status. According to Jodhka (2015) ‘caste as the dominant phenomena of Indian society, is perceived in the light of a ritual practice, power politics and humiliation. Caste identities cannot be seen in isolation in the Indian context, as it intersects with other social determinants like class, gender, religion, region within the reading of poverty expanse’ (Shah et al., 2018). Therefore, taking this into account, the concept of intersectionality facilitates an improved understanding of the discourse on access to natural resources and its impact on women from different strata of society.

Fieldwork for the research presented (in this article) was undertaken in a village located in the state of Gujarat, India. Case study methodology was applied while considering ethnographic qualitative research design for data collection. The study comprised my longitudinal primary research fieldwork conducted between 2008–2009, 2012–2014 and 2017 in Mathnaa, Sabarkantha district, Gujarat, India. ⁵ The research methodology used for the analysis presented in this article, is ethnographic in nature (Yin, 2003). It collates participatory rural appraisal (PRA) tools, interviews of key informants, focus group discussions, direct observations, thick description and household surveys. Primary data collection methods were varied so as to gather multiple narratives from individuals across caste and gender hierarchy. In total, 121 semi-structured interviews and 16 focus group discussions (FGDs) were conducted on various socio-economic, political and cultural topics over a period of time. A household survey, covering 200 households, was conducted to generate quantitative evidence of the characteristics of rural households. These included caste and tribe ratio, kinship lineage, gender control and access to natural resources, and level and scope of knowledge about the watershed project, groundwater markets and water problems as a whole. The village studied had a good commingle of Hindu caste (Rajputs, Thakore and Dalits) and Adivasi (tribal) population (e.g., Table 1). The total area of the village under study is 503 ha, of which 449 ha is the total cultivable area and 46 ha is the wasteland. Rainfed agriculture is the principal source of livelihood with kharif and rabi being the two primary crops sown throughout the year. ⁶ Unreliable rainfall and shortage of groundwater affect the crop yield. They also determine the decision to plant major crops in summer months, except for fodder or seasonal vegetables for sustenance. In Mathnaa, agriculture is both irrigated and non-irrigated; wells are the main source of irrigation.

OPEN IN VIEWER

Table 1.

Caste-wise Distribution.

Caste	No. of Households
Jadeja	8
Thakores	100
Dungri Garasia	56
Dalit	36

Source: The author.

The Jadeja (Rajputs) caste occupies the highest status in Mathnaa, legally owning around 113 ha of land. Next in the hierarchy are Thakores, the backward caste that claims descent from the Rajputs. Approximately 137 ha of land is owned by 100 households in Mathnaa. Next come the Dungri Garasias or the Adivasis (first people), meaning indigenous people, where the exact translation of the term is jagirdar or inamdar of the hilly areas (Gazetteer of India, 1974). Dungri is a colloquial word meaning hills, and Garasia means grass; hence, it means people who cleared forest land for preparation for cultivation. This community of people migrated three centuries ago from the Mewar region of Rajasthan, India. They reside on their fields/farms, and agricultural is their main sources of livelihood. In total, 122 ha of land is owned by the Adivasi households. At the bottom of the caste hierarchy are Dalits (former ‘untouchables’). ⁷ Dalits, residing on the fringes of Mathnaa, have no control over common lands.

Castes or jatis are endogamous groups that maintain hierarchy by separating kin groups through restrictions on marriage, diet and social behaviour (Mosse, 2018). Pollution and purity are fundamental in directing patterns of social interactions in the Hindu community within the larger locus of untouchability (Dumont, 1980; Guru, 2009). Sharma (2016) found in his study on Dalits in rural Himachal Pradesh that social structural dynamics continued to nurture and reinforce caste hierarchies. Within its economic, political and ideological facets, caste defines division of occupation (probably in an agricultural rural structure), which is attributed to status, supremacy and governance at local levels in addition to status based on purity and impurity, rituals and moral composition and variance in interactions, respectively (Dumont, 1980; Marriott & Inden, 1977).

In Mathnaa, the centrality of caste defines, regulates and determines dwellings, landholdings and access to water. In the village, no one is landless. Land possession by members of each caste is in some form based on inheritance, caste and claims grounded in local history. According to village elders, the Jadeja and the Thakore community owned large chunks of land. Reforms introduced in 1960 and The Gujarat Agricultural Lands Ceiling Act enforced in 1961 introduced ceilings on existing landholding and for future acquisition. Subsequently, land redistribution offered some reprieve to marginalised communities like the Dalits and the Adivasis. Economic independence, numerical strength or political mobilisation are often preconditions for caste change (Béteille, 1965). However, the two major groups—Jadeja and Thakore—own more than 250 ha of land in Mathnaa. Furthermore, 69% of the large farmers belong to these castes. Thus, as stated previously, control over land and economic power allows them the luxury to invest in borewell technology.

Illegal occupation of gauchar land, that is, land for grazing cattle, or the small piece of land between private fields, or the village pond, is a common phenomenon in Mathnaa. The main gauchar land has been encroached upon by the Jadeja families, leaving no common land for other villagers to graze their cattle. The sole village pond of Mathnaa is parched during the summer months and is controlled and used for cultivation by the dominant caste. Land records reveal discrepancy between landholding records of the talati (village revenue officer) and records available at the local revenue office of the tehsildar at the block level. For example, the gauchar land is shown as CPR on the village map and used by the entire Mathnaa village community. But in reality, it is encroached upon with no mention of it in the formal records and on the map (Naz, 2014).

My work tracks the scholarship in the social science and empirical debate, which questions the stand of common property theorists, on the notion of unified homogeneous rural communities having informal institutions, leading to efficiency, equity and sustainability in access to and managing CPRs. It is widely acknowledged that seeing communities as a unified and homogeneous social group is problematic (see, Agrawal & Gibson, 1999; Naz, 2014; Sangameswaran, 2008). Communities are diverse in their composition based on caste, wealth, age, gender, religion and ethnicity. Thus, studying them from one common social parameter is unsubstantiated (Mehta, 2005, 2007; Mosse, 1997). However, literature on CPRs came in as a reply to Hardin’s (1968) ‘tragedy of the commons’ and pushed forward the discourse on communities being in a stable position to manage resources when they are of small size, leading to sharing of benefits (see, Baland & Platteau, 1996; Berkes, 1989; Chambers & McBeth, 1992; Olson, 1965; Ostrom, 1990; Wade, 1988).

The resource users have diverse multiple interests and contested claims to CPRs even within the same village community. Therefore, having a single homogeneous perspective on the community, taken by the property theorists, has been debated for long (see, Baviskar, 1996). Common property theorists tend to romanticise the concept of community, overlooking the local power/politics/hierarchies and agency at play (Agrawal, 1994; Long & van der Ploeg, 1989). Recent views and various empirical studies have reflected on the outdated social theory, which assumes that community structures can manage resources justly (see, Giddens, 1984; Leach et al., 1997; Long, 1992).

My aim is to engage intersectionality and explain its role as a critical framework for analysing numerous impacts on women of different social groups in the context of grabbing of gauchar land within the purview of CPRs. My study suggests that women belonging to different groups have multiple identities, which define their negotiations and access to resources, in relation to CPRs. Thus, group-based differences and power access determine access to material and institutional base in relation to land grab wherein the governance structure might fall short of addressing these issues.

There are five sections in this article. The second section throws light on the loss of CPRs in India. The third section in brief touches upon the discourse on intersectionality framework in relation to natural resource management. The fourth section elucidates the findings centred around the changes that were brought in relation to the case study due to land grabs in CPRs. Finally, the article ends with discussion, conclusion and policy implications.

Common Property Resources Loss in India

CPRs in villages include ponds/lakes/rivers/rivulets and their banks and beds; community forests, community pastures and wastelands; common dumping and threshing grounds; and watershed drainages (Gowda & Savadatti, 2004). These resources often support the local poor communities, like marginal farmers and landless labourers in their livelihood, by being the main source of land for fodder/livestock grazing and water for use (Agarwal, 2000, 2001). CPRs are a fallback mechanism to deal with and adapt to uncertain environmental circumstances (Berkes, 1989; Bromley & Cernea, 1989). In India, rural communities are dependent on CPRs for various socio-economic needs (Pradhan & Patra, 2011). In Mathnaa, one sees that the common grazing land for cattle or gauchar is controlled by the dominant families, leaving no common land for the other communities.

It was revealed in the largest national-level assessment study of National Sample Survey Office (NSSO) in 1999 that CPRs contribute in providing approximately 58% of fuel wood and up to 25% of fodder requirements of rural India (National Sample Survey Office Study, 1999). With the passage of time, overexploitation of CPRs for private gains, decline in traditional social cohesion and public policies promoting economic globalisation have resulted in the rapid deterioration of the CPRs in India (Jodha et al., 2012). The consequence of this was loss in sources of livelihood, promoting migration of the rural population to cities (Chaturvedi et al., 2015; Steinberg, 2013; Suresh et al., 2010).

Under the Common Guidelines of 1994, a local NGO started a watershed development project in Mathnaa under the Integrated Wastelands Development Programme (IWDP) in 1999. There were nine check dams (water retaining structure) constructed on rivulets in Mathnaa to check the flow of water, reduce land degradation and increase the percolation rate in upstream areas for wells, recharging borewells and ultimately increasing water for irrigation. These were constructed on common property such as wastelands, unused pastureland and the traverse land of rivulets and drains. However, these identified land pieces had been already grabbed (under the control) by farmers whose fields were adjacent to the CPRs (common land, in this case). Consequently, no private land was submerged when these check dams were constructed. The check dams worked on the lines of a common property regime. ⁸ However, contrary to the intent of their utilisation, they contributed to the recharge of groundwater in private borewells here owned by the dominant caste (Jadejas and Thakores), which were in proximity to the check dams. The major reason for this is the fact that residential patterns in Mathnaa are demarcated by caste and tribe. Agricultural land of each caste adjoins the caste residential/dwelling quarters, and the check dams built predominantly help in recharging the groundwater for these privately owned borewells of the dominant caste. This again defeats the purpose of equal share in the CPRs for all the communities in Mathnaa.

There has been an ongoing debate on the settings for the survival and strengthening of CPRs (Ostrom, 1990). Apart from being intertwined with village economic life, CPRs also have a sociocultural and religious cosmology when resources are assigned symbolic meaning as in the case of ponds, lakes, scared trees, lands, etc. (Mehta, 2005). Thus, along with sociocultural symbolism norms of exclusion and inclusion for the CPRs (Mehta, 2007; Naz, 2014), village water bodies (tanks and ponds) play a key ecological function by recharging local aquifers and maintaining local water balance (Shah, 2003). In the Indian context, dynamics such as caste, class and religion in the rural scenario are imperative interdependent components of CPR regimes, varying from village to village (Gaur et al., 2018; Steinberg, 2013).

Pre-colonial India witnessed relatively free availability of natural resources controlled by rural communities. In post-independent India, the expansion of state control over CPRs caused a decline in ownership and control by villagers, and subsequently, the community-based management system failed (Agarwal & Narain, 1997). Furthermore, a decline in the CPRs in many parts of India since the early 1950s has been attributed to factors such as fast-paced commercialisation, population pressures, agricultural modernisation, use of modern technology, land reforms and the Green Revolution (Jodha, 1985; Pasha, 1991). In the name of development, large expanses of land have been taken over by the state (Citizens Research Collective, 2007). India’s independence brought about land reforms, which impacted the management of CPRs and ownerships, thus changing village common pasturelands into cultivated lands, in turn leading to the decline in availability of free fodder for livestock in villages (Bon, 2000; Jodha, 1986, 1992). Goswami (2011) notes that in rural India, CPR lands have been declining by almost 2% every 5 years.

As a pan-Indian phenomenon, the state has used the Land Acquisition Act of 1894 to legitimise its overtaking of the CPRs in the name of developmental work (Steinberg, 2013). Thus, factors contributing to the deterioration of CPR are operating at the regional, community and household levels, where climate change has also played a vital role in their decline (see, Arnold & Stewart, 1991; Jodha, 1992; Jodha et al., 2012). As noted by Dubash (2000, 2002) and Hardiman (2007), it is historically evident that in Gujarat, caste and kinship networks operate through shared investments in group-owned borewells and on a capitalist principle to access falling groundwater levels. This can be seen as an outcome of correlation among hydrology, state action, social conditions and networks, which reinforce caste domination and social inequality, through the use of capital that drives (uneven) accumulation and social differentiation. Partnerships around tube wells are based on affiliations of similar castes of landholders; in rural India, members of similar caste and ethnic background have contiguous plots (Naz, 2014). Groundwater is an open-access resource, with free accessibility by anyone to obtain as much as required from the ground below. The lack of any social authority to define and enforce the rights of individuals or a group to use open-access resources has promoted the appropriation of groundwater by large-scale landholding farmers with the capital to invest, in turn depriving poor farmers who are bound in their dependency to wealthy tube well owners (Bhatia, 1992; Dubash, 2002; Mukherji, 2006; Prakash, 2005). Hindrances to access are limited to infrastructural investment for extraction of groundwater. As a result, its open access is a ‘restricted’ or ‘skewed’ regime as is observed in Mathnaa, the upper-caste ‘water-lords’ have access to capital, allowing them to wield influence over lower castes as well as controlling the groundwater market (Naz, 2014, 2015).

Thus, CPRs’ access, management and governance have been loaded with complexities and continuous struggles within and among the communities and the state interventions. We witness that in Mathnaa, CPRs such as gauchar land, including wastelands, check dams, ponds and its beds and watershed drainages have been grabbed and made inaccessible for the Dalit and Adivasi communities.

Intersectionality Framework

Intersectionality has its roots within the feminist academia. It is used as an analytical framework to understand how gender intersects with the social differences and power dynamics found in a society. It offers a new direction in the critique of feminist theories, which tend to classify women as a uniform collective (McCall, 2005). Intersectionality could be understood as ‘the interaction between gender, race and other categories of difference in individual lives, social practices, institutional arrangements, and cultural ideologies and the outcomes of these interactions in terms of power’ (Davis, 2008, p. 68). Intersectionality was originally developed by Crenshaw (1991) to see how gender intersects with race and class. The trend of intersectionality picked up its momentum with great speed with post-colonial and anti-racist feminism era. The novelty of intersectionality is that it brought together numerous threads of feminist and sociological accounts and thoughts on diversity and differences under one umbrella (Davis, 2008; Risman, 2004; Thompson, 2016; West & Fenstermaker, 1995). In her article, Menon (2015) discusses how the concept of intersectionality is globally relevant and is being attached to funding, in particular, of the United Nations.

Now with its wider usage and acceptability in the academia and policy discourse, intersectionality is used to address differences, which exist among a number of social categories. In the present context, it is used to examine how social differentiations operate among various social groupings through norms and power relations. Davis (2008) and Lykke (2010) describe the way intersectionality is seen as a buzzword for feminist theorising. To understand how power dynamics assigns different types of access to resources, intersectionality perspective becomes important for the analysis. Social groups serve as a ground for inclusion and exclusion, wherein, at all levels, power patterns are at work (Winker & Degele, 2011). Relationships of power can be demonstrated in different ways like discrimination in material circumstances and regulating manifestations within different social constructs and organisations, and those that exist are articulated and replicated through social repetitions (Kaijser & Kronsell 2014). Some feminist scholars have advocated that individual positions are embedded in the power relations which in turn dictates specific circumstances of the individuals (Harding, 1991). Thus, intersectionality has been framed as a theory for understanding and examining the in-depth human experiences due to multiple intersecting social differences, social categories and structures of power (Simpson, 2009; Thompson, 2016).

In the natural resource management discourse linked to gender, there is a growing recognition of viewing women as a multifaceted group of identities within the gender category rather than a homogeneous category (Carr, 2008; Tschakert, 2012). Various empirical studies, recently in the Asian contexts, have acknowledged the prominence of intersectionality in natural resource management discourse. These studies clearly confirmed that interactions of numerous identities, such as of caste, social class, age, religion, demographic status (status in the household) and gender, are prone to risks, disasters, access to water and management of micro-level water structures (Buisson et al., 2017; Naz, 2019; Ravera et al., 2016; Ray-Bennett, 2009).

Men and women are not a homogenous group, having several overlapping social identities, and are subject to differences on the bases of caste and gender in water resource management, particularly in the case of check dams as seen in Mathnaa. ⁹ Women took up the difficult task of cleaning and maintaining the check dams. Furthermore, caste-based differences, among the female community ensured that Dalits and Adivasis laboured, while the upper-caste Jadeja and Thakore women were free from such demands. Gender-based hierarchy on the lines of caste stratification was apparent from the task allocation for women of different groups as men, irrespective of caste hierarchy, were not responsible for maintaining the check dams.

Therefore, it is practical to use intersectionality framework to cognise the interactions between manifold magnitudes of social and power parameters in a society for accessing natural resources (Davis, 2008; McCall, 2005). From a sociological and intersectionality point of view, it suggests different forms of social and cultural discrimination present at multiple levels contribute to inequalities in access to natural resources at the village level. Thus, from an intersectionality viewpoint, in an Indian set-up, the conventional ways of oppression in society are not independent of each other, but often interlinked (Kumar, 2010).

Insights from the Field

Globally, it has been observed that the female gender is burdened with the task of fetching water and collecting firewood, which often expose them to vulnerable situations and dangers of violence, especially when these resources become scarce (Shiva, 1989). In India, rural social hierarchy is strongly caste based, dictating the terms of power relations, which govern the mechanism of access to resources. Caste is duplicated through democratic politics and expressed through caste-based political strategies and voting, which produce new categories across individual jatis, through a ‘horizontal stretch’ (Srinivas, 1995). Its boundaries and hierarchies are demonstrated in/through factors such as wealth, gender and access to resources. Gender operates at the structural level such as kinship, property, labour divisions, identities and symbols (Harding, 1996).

As much as caste has a religious facet, defined and legitimised in Hindu scripture, it also has a socio-economic facet that influences local economies, social and cultural privileges, and political regimes (Jodhka & Shah, 2010). This is seen more prominently in rural India, where it is the basis of identity, a form of social organisation and the foundation for asserting claims to resource. Caste networks fortify socio-economic hierarchies, while also generating various forms of exclusion (Vijayabaskar & Kalaiyarasan, 2014). The study found that in 80% of the recently surveyed 565 villages across 11 Indian states, Dalits faced segregation and exclusion in public domain (Shah et al., 2006), and 27% of the 42,000 households in a nationally representative survey (in 2011–2012) admitted practising untouchability in private spaces (Thorat & Joshi, 2015).

Thus, caste and power mutually benefit each other at the micro and local level of social stratification (Zwarteveen et al., 2012). The development network has the inclination to overlook the colliding of multiple identities in concurrence with caste and gender. This is exactly what the intersectionality framework aims at decoding. The vulnerability of women to discrimination and marginalisation pervades caste and gender realities, specifically in their quest for access to resources and opportunities. The historical specificity of context-based social exclusion precipitates the intersection of various levels of differentiation and categorisation through the contestations of political economy, cultural contextualisation, subjective realities and experiential latitude, something which the intersectionality approach makes way for ontological mapping of discrimination and mobility. Keeping these factors in mind, I have used the intersectionality framework to understand the concurrence of multiple identities with gender. The marginalised characteristics of these identities force women to take less decisive roles, abandoning them to the vulnerabilities of discrimination and inequity in accessing resources and opportunities (Symington, 2004). The intersectionality perspective records the development of varied multidimensional yet contradictory impacts of intersecting axes of diversity—such as economic, political, cultural, psychic, subjective and experiential—within historically specific contexts (Brah & Phoenix, 2004).

Social realities of caste and gender are intersectional in nature, and at numerous levels, there is a blending of these two social denominations within the structure of Indian society. Ambedkar recognised and advocated this many decades ago (1916), when he stated that caste and gender identities were not only parallel in Indian society but in many ways also intersectional in nature. In the complex caste network of rural India, Dalit and Adivasi women bear the brunt of it due to their unique, multidimensional disadvantage as a minority group within a minority group of women (Chakravarti, 2003; Rege, 2006). Dutta et al. (2018), elsewhere, in their study stated, that Dalit women occupy a space in the social hierarchy wherein they face discrimination not only on the bases of caste but also political and economic class and gender where they are located. Dalton’s (2008) study elaborates the plight of Dalit women as ‘Triple Dalit’—meaning, being a woman, then being a poor woman and finally a poor Dalit woman.

According to Ambedkar (2013), upanayana or the sacred thread ceremony, dictated by the Brahmanical social order, is a crucial determinant of social exclusion of women and Dalits, from owning properties/land. Ambedkar (1916) also emphasised that matrimonial customs and restrictions promoting endogamy and caste purity are entwined with gender and caste. Chakravarti (2003), Kapoor (2007) and Natrajan (2012) illustrate the control of Dalit women’s autonomy and writ through a dual institution of caste-based restrictions and sexuality where caste limitations are perpetuated by the Brahmanical patriarchal system, premised on the iteration of caste-based upanayana privileges. It has also been observed by Kapoor (2007) as to how the sexuality and bodies of Dalit women are further controlled by Hindu men wearing the sacred thread in the form of sexual atrocities and amorous ordering.

Thus, gender experiences of inequity are the outcome of the principle of discrimination and segregation of the caste system (Guru, 2009) wherein caste as a form of inequality based on hierarchy helps in understanding the tenacity of caste in contemporary India (Ambedkar, 2011). When it comes to control of resources like land and water, dominant caste hegemony and landownership dominate the scene in most of rural India (Mehta, 2007; Naz, 2014; Steinberg, 2013). Encroachment of gauchar is rampant in Mathnaa. As the gauchar land comes under the panchayat land, it is meant for common grazing of the livestock. Its encroachment started some years ago, and inch by inch, it was encroached and is used for private purposes of the dominant caste in the village.

An interviewee from a Dalit household noted that the local government officials like talati (revenue officer) and some officials at the taluka (Block) level collude with the Jadejas when it comes to land records of the village. Manakbhai, a Dalit, stated:

The officials at the taluka level are aware of the land grabs but do not bother to take any serious actions, because of their caste affiliation with the dominant caste in the village. (Personal interview, 17 September 2017)

However, official records show the land clearly marked and being used as pastureland by everyone in the village. Development officers, on condition of anonymity, accepted that there have been few and far between cases of land encroachment, which are not significant in terms of a big executive worry. They argued these to be trivial issues revolving around personal enmity and not associated with any form of caste conflict per se. An official at the Block level argued:

These are some cases here and there in some villages, which are trivial in nature. Not to be worried about. Most of the time, these complains are lodged based on personal enmity otherwise they all are party to it for their vested interest. (Personal interviews, 18 May 2009 and 22 December 2013)

To the Block-level officials, these matters are posed in the form of caste issues and other local-level disputes, where everybody is privy to going against the law and norms of even the gram panchayat for their vested interests. Also, it is taken as umbrage by a group in the village, which is not supported by the village residents at the time of elections, against those sitting in power, read the winners of panchayat elections.

Yet, interviewees from the Dalit and Adivasi communities were of a different opinion: some of the key officials at the Block level are from the dominant Rajput caste, and so they do not take any serious action. FGD with Dalit men revealed:

Even after repeated complaints, nothing concrete seems to happen. They have always tried to pacify us, by saying that they will take the necessary action. Most of the officials are Rajput, so they will not serve our interest. (Dalit men, FGD, 19 September 2017)

Thus, it is a combination and interplay of executive nexus and caste domination where, at the cost of being a mute spectator to the wrongdoings, Dalit and Adivasi communities are mostly at the receiving end. International Dalit Solidarity Network (2009), Chakravarti (2003), Sabharwal and Sonalkar (2015), and Ambedkar (2011) and others realised that social, economic and political imbalances rendered Dalit women vulnerable due to their low positions in caste, class and gender hierarchies, forcing them to endure gender and caste-based discrimination along with physical and mental violence. In many ways, the problems of Dalit women are diverse and exclusive, arising from weak economic position, patriarchy and untouchability-based discrimination (Sabharwal & Sonalkar, 2015). Thus, taking this as the starting point of land encroachment in the case study, I see how it has impacted Dalit women of the Mathnaa society. A major observation that has impacted lives is that there has been a decline in the livestock in the households that depended on gauchar for grazing. As the common gauchar land of Mathnaa has been encroached upon by the upper caste, majority of the Dalits and Adivasis have been forced to reduce their livestock, as buying fodder was turning out to be beyond their reach.

Changes in the kind of livestock was also observed, like households switched from cattle to keeping goats and chickens.

The high cost of maintaining livestock due to increased food price and decline in availability of free grazing land and fodder, in the past decade—many Dalit and Adivasi families are giving up rearing large livestock. This has greatly impacted the Dalits and the Adivasi, especially their women, as they heavily relied on the common gauchar land for grazing and fodder collection.

The decline in gauchar land has also significantly increased the women’s workload, as they now have to spend more hours in fodder collection. This has added to the drudgery of work. Additionally, loss of livestock means that the women must do extra labour work in order to compensate the loss of income. In an FGD held with the author, a group of Dalit women from the village revealed:

We have greater workload now, as we have to take the animals for grazing to long distances and look for free pastures to graze them. This means we have less time for other leisure activities, as most of our time goes in fodder collection and looking for free grazing lands. (Dalit women, FGD, 22 September 2017)

Many women from the Dalit and Adivasi group explained that with decline in gauchar land, they have less time for other work and recreational activities such as sewing, knitting and chatting. Places of natural resources provide space for socialisation for women, and any form of land dispossession is a cause of social dislocation and break in communal networking for them (Chu, 2011; Pandey, 1998). Repercussions of loss of gauchar can be seen in the decline in income as a result of the decline of livestock; an increase in daily migration of men as labourers has also increased with the burden of animal husbandry shifting to women, added to the extended hours women spend looking for fodder, fuel and wood. A negative impact on income levels can be seen in town migration of men as daily wagers and decreased income from livestock.

With decline in common grazing land, there is increased competition among stakeholder for use of the free pastureland/gauchar for free fodder, in the past few years, leading to animosity. The impact of climate change has worsened the situation. FGDs with the Dalit and Adivasi women revealed:

They do not allow us to graze in the gauchar land, and do not want us to come, they also threaten us with dire consequences. Earlier it was still allowed but now since past few years’ rainfall has been less, so we are not entertained most of the time. Climate is changing, in some more years to come, there could be riots for water and fodder in our area, as now less land is available for grazing, most of land is going barren. (Dalit women, FGD, 26 September 2017; Adivasi women, FGD, 29 September 2017)

Contrary to this, women from the dominant caste groups were not affected much by the encroachments on the gauchar land. This became evident in an FGD with Dalit and Adivasi women:

Whereas the women from the upper and the middle order caste (Jadeja and Thakore) households are hardly impacted, as they own enough land where they can grow fodder; and have control and access to the gauchar land, due to the good network castes enjoy amongst themselves. (Dalit women, FGD, 27 December 2012; Adivasi women, FGD, 28 December 2012)

Women’s subjectivities in relation to the time and labour invested by differently positioned women in fodder and fuel collection, the time stresses they encounter, all need to be taken into account while studying from intersectionality point of view. Gender relations seem to be changing with the decline in access to CPRs. Responsibilities and the workload on the farm and the household have increased for women, as stated by the Dalit and Adivasi women:

Large amount of time goes in grazing the animals—as we have to look for free pasturelands in the nearby areas - this has also led to a loss of day-wages, (since large number of women work as agricultural labourers). Subsequently, it translates into sacrificing a day’s earning, if we take our animals for grazing. (FGD with Dalit and Adivasi women, 20 September 2017)

Women are also concerned about safety issues as they have to travel to other villages looking for fuel and free fodder for grazing animals. To provide security, boys of the household or kins escort young girls when they go outside the village to graze animals. FGD with Dalit and Adivasi women revealed:

There are also safety issues involved regards young women and adolescent girls who have had to walk quite a distance for grazing animals or collecting fodder, leading to fear when they get back home late. We need to send a young boy from our families to accompany women folk, especially if we are sending our young girls to graze animals. Our husbands tell us, not to come home late, due to safety issues and advise us not to send our young girls alone for fodder collection or take animals out for grazing to far of places. (FGD with Dalit and Adivasi women, 27 September 2017)

With the encroachment of village pond and converting it into cultivable land, it has led to rationing of water for household and cattle use. Meeraben, a Dalit woman stated:

The powerful caste groups with political link and money have encroached land near the village pond…this is leading to a constant problem of water scarcity for cattle, human bathing, washing etc. (Personal interview, 21 December 2014)

Thus, Dalit and Adivasi women who earlier enjoyed bathing freely, now, have to ration the water for household consumption. There is also the extra expenditure in buying water. FGDs with Dalit and Adivasi women revealed:

We have to spend extra money for buying water for household chores which is affecting our family budgetary expenses. Now we do not get to save some money to buy cosmetic such as bangles, which we could afford to do earlier. The household budget has been impacted. (Dalit women, FGD 25 September 2017; Adivasi women, FGD, 27 September 2017)

Dominant caste plays a vital role in social and land relations in the village. Though in the traditional caste sense, jajmani (patron–client) type of system does not exist in the village, there is a loose sort of patron–client relations existent as, in spite of land grab, many Dalit and Adivasi members of the village do not repeatedly complain to the local government machinery, as many of them work as labourers in the farmlands owned by the upper caste. Additionally, at times, some Dalits or Adivasi families are allowed to graze their animals in the encroached gauchar land, and in return, they provide additional labour to the upper-caste households. Hence, in Mathnaa, people have their own ways of making peace and harmonising their everyday social and private life, which must be understood in the larger realm of accessing natural resources.

Discussion and Conclusion

Land grab is not a new phenomenon. It is prevalent globally, existing since colonialism. However, its magnitude had transformed over space and time. Whether large scale or small scale, land grabs jeopardise local communities’ access to natural resources who are dependent on it. It has been widely acknowledged that land grab takes place at both the macro and micro village level. Lopsided power structures/relations in the rural landscape dispossess certain social groups from access to CPRs, while allowing dominant groups to dodge accountability to village communities, consequently, leading local accountability as a socially shaped process. In the history of Gujarat, it is imperative to concretise perceptions around the conventional definition of land grabs, which should include its historicity enmeshed in capital control and materiality.

Thus, loss of and grabbing of CPRs in India are juxtaposition between government’s land-use policies, on the one hand, and local politics at the village level, which has varied impact on women of different social standings. Women are not a homogeneous category, and loss of CPRs costs women from the marginalised local communities—but it greatly effects those who are from small landholding households and from lower strata of society. Land grabs have forced changes in the livestock/agrarian patterns and brought changes in gender relation, impacting women variedly. It was observed that the households having a better economic standing had a bigger clout over CPRs, and women from these households were not adversely impacted when it came to access to resources and changes in the relations. Land grab even at the micro level, for instance, in a rural setting like Mathnaa, exemplifies power dynamics and the local accountability operating therein.

From an intersectional understanding, one can argue that women belonging to different social groups such as caste, age, class and ethnic background relate to land grab in differing ways. Likewise, women’s position in the local power hierarchies based on social groups determines their negotiations, norms and gender relations. The social position intersecting with identities, based on caste, wealth, age, class, ethnicity and religion, influence the decision and disclose power dynamics and negotiating capacities to access resources. Here, as observed in their narratives, it is clear that Dalit and Adivasi women and young girls face sexual harassment, fatigue, drudgery and have less time for recreational activities. However, women from the dominant caste do not confront such challenges. Therefore, intersectionality framework has a great potential for reflecting on the mechanism, which is at play holistically. Multiple social magnitudes of power, status and social positions determine the access of CPRs, which could be best understood when using the intersectionality perspective in a small rural community like Mathnaa. It is important to understand the position of women from diverse social groups in the context of localised historical and sociocultural contexts of power patterns. Thus, this plays a pivotal role in negotiating the access to resources by women belonging to different categories of social groups. Intersectionality perspective also helps in understanding the construction of the social group subjectivities in relation to access to resources and land grabs in this case. It helps us to understand and scrutinise contextually the position of a specific group or individual and how particular social locations both enable and delimit the individual agency. Therefore, feminist intersectionality approach does give the impression of being useful and worth exploring in land grab and access to resource discourse. (Through the gender and caste lens, one can explain the diversity of women experiences within the larger realm of land grab, which is again context specific).

The complex interaction of gender and caste produces prejudice and discriminations in the policies meant for development and creates problems in the governance structures. Governance structure must take into account that people live and experience multiple identities, which are determined by the local power structures and social hierarchies. Hence, policy designs need better reflection, wherein women and girls from the Dalit and Adivasi communities are at the centre of development policies.