eChapters

1. The Context

Poverty continues to be a major issue the world over. Over the last decade there has been a significant reduction in the number of the extremely poor. Extreme poverty rates fell from 10.1 per cent in 2015 to 9.2 per cent in 2017 (https://blogs.worldbank.org/opendata/global-poverty-reduction-slowing-regionaltrends-help-understanding-why). However, despite these achievements, we still have 689 million people living on less than two dollars a day and estimates by the World Bank in 2020 indicate that if one takes an account of higher poverty lines we have 24.1 percent of the world living on less than $3.20 a day and 43.6 percent on less than $5.50 a day in 2017 (http://www.worldbank.org/en/topic/poverty/overview). The disturbing aspect of this analysis are the facts that half of this poor are children and in most areas where poverty is encountered women represent a sizeable chunk of them. Poverty in real life is translated into lack of access to education and consumption of diets that are both quantitatively and qualitatively deficient in crucial micro nutrients and vitamins, placing them at higher risks on account of protein energy malnutrition, vitamin A deficiency and the all pervading problem of anaemia. The social consequences of such diets and implications for human capital of the world in the later part of this century would be devastating.

Poverty among women has huge repercussions for the citizens of tomorrow. It is in this context that the role of livestock products assumes crucial importance. Milk, eggs and meat have some of the highest bio-availabilities of crucial protein, iron and vitamin A. Berrazaga et al. (2019) observed that though plant proteins are beneficial in terms of the advantages that they offer from environmental and health points of view, the anabolic effect of plant proteins is generally lower than that of animal proteins. This is on account of their lower digestibility, relatively lower contents of essential amino acids such as leucine and the lack of sulphur amino acids such as lysine. The authors further observed that food protein quality was assessed by digestibility, net protein utilisation and biological value and these

1. Introduction

Adequate nutrition is the fundamental keystone of any individual’s health. It is especially crucial for women because it causes havoc not only on the woman’s health but also on their children’s health and in turn the community. Malnutrition causes a variety of risks to women. It undermines women’s ability to survive childbirth, makes them more susceptible to infections, and leaves them with fewer reserves to recover from illness. Children of malnourished women are found to face impaired cognition, short stature, decreased resistance to infections, and an increased risk of disease and death throughout their lives. The increasing number of malnourished population in any country is a threat to its technological and economic development. Moreover, a chronically undernourished woman in every probability will give birth to a baby who is likely to be undernourished as a child.Thus malnourishment in women perpetuate the cycle of under-nutrition to be repeated over generations.In other words, women’s nutritional status impacts the countries nutritional status.

Despite economic progress, India has failed to combat malnutrition that adversely affects the country’s socio-economic progress. This is reflected in the hunger score of 27.2 which categorized India in ‘serious’ hunger category. The Global Hunger Index (GHI) rank of the country is 94 among 107 countries in 2020 and was 102 out of 117 countries in 2019. In fact, GHI is calculated based on the four indicators viz. undernourishment, child wasting, child stunting and child mortality. Estimates also suggest that more than one-third of the world’s malnourished children are in India. Among the varied causes of malnutrition in the country, major ones include mother’s nutritional status, lactation behaviour, women’s education and sanitation. These in turn affect children in several forms and get manifested as childhood illness, stunting, and retarded growth. Therefore, addressing the nutrition of women population at all levels is essential to safeguard the future generations, and in turn the human capital and economic development of any nation.

1. Introduction

Agriculture and its allied sector is the largest economic sector in India and Indian economy depends heavily on the performance of this sector. Along with production, changes are occurring in supply, machinery, processing, distribution and marketing in the agriculture sector. All over the world, agriculture is passing through a phase of transition, and elements such as discrimination free trade, fair trade, transparency and its resulting predictability, scope for fair competition are being facilitated in to the agriculture sector through different norms and agreements. Due to the concerns about the environment, requirement of clean fuel which can be derived from vegetable sources are also getting increased. All these developments have created new opportunities and scopes for agriculture and agribusiness. Agripreneurship is considered as an employment in the strategy in the country especially for rural people. It promotes our economy by improving productivity and integrating the products into different markets including international markets. It helps in the reduction of cost and avoiding the uncertainties related to markets. To promote micro to medium scale industries, agripreneurship has a major role. Agripreneur faces constraints in related to identification of scope, proper time management and allocating budget etc. and proper project management skills are required to counter these constraints. Agripreneur should also consider sustainability, social and economic factors also (Gupta et al., 2017).

The male-centered business models were considered as the norm till the advent of the present century. But now we have entered an era where there is consensus that women entrepreneurs’ have huge role in the national economic development. Moreover, a significant number of studies show that even though there is a gap between the number of men and women entrepreneurs, the contribution from

women entrepreneurs has been constantly on the rise. This is despite the challenges faced by women entrepreneurs with respect to availability of credit, training, networks and information access and policy constraints. In order to ensure sustainable economic growth, it is necessary to embrace women’s entrepreneurship as it gives new market opportunities and greater development impact. In this chapter, emphasis is given to women entrepreneurship and its contribution to national economy, social empowerment and national integration. Also the challenges and opportunities faced by women in agri-entrepreneurship and changes in the perceptions on women entrepreneurship are discussed.

1. Introduction

Gender remains a critically important and largely ignored lens to view development issues across the world (Jayaraman, 2017). Gender inequality is the greatest human rights challenge of our time and also a critical economic, moral and social challenge (UN, 2015). There exists a significant gender gap in various sectors such as health, labour market opportunities, education and political representation all over the world. This mostly cause the restriction of women to stay at home for household chores. However, the associated disempowerment resulting from the adverse effects of restricting their way around outside world are seldom addressed in the development evaluation and monitoring processes (UNICEF, 2019). Therefore, gender equality and women empowerment are made explicit throughout the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Drawing urgency to these efforts, SDG5 aims on full gender equality and women empowerment as a cross-cutting theme along with more than 30 related targets across other SDGs.

According to FAO (2011), rural women constitute about 43 percent of world’s agricultural labour force and are the agents of change and resilience builders. Even then they undergo greater constraints compared to the men counterparts in accessing technological interventions, productive resources, market information, services and financial assets. The contribution of women to food security often remains undervalued and invisible (FAO, 2011). This leads to inadequate reflection of women’s role in policy, legal and institutional frameworks. These have created difficult situations for them to address the multiple tasks of natural resource management, child rearing and family well-being, without more rural women inclusive development interventions. There would be a drastic reduction in the number of hungry population and malnourished children in the world if women had the same access as men to productive resources which in

turn helps to increase yields on their farms significantly (FAO, 2018). Furthermore, they are also under-represented in grassroot level institutions and administrative mechanisms and assumed to have less decision-making ability. In addition to these constraints, women face an imprudent work burden, at the same time much of their labour remains unpaid and unrecognized under the prevailing gender norms and discrimination. It is high time to include them in decision making process within the households, communities and institutions and thus to enhance women’s participation in governance (Bayeh, 2016).

1. Introduction

The intricate relationship between agriculture and women has been widely featured in the development discourse for long. Globally, more than 400 million women are engaged in farm work directly or indirectly. In other words, 42 per cent of economically active women are engaged in agriculture and they comprise about 43 per cent of the total workforce in agriculture (Dash and Srinath, 2013). In India, agriculture and allied sectors continue to be the most immediate avenues of employment and income for about 160 million rural women who work as farmers, co-farmers, farm labourers and farm entrepreneurs (Oxfam 2017; Sadangi et al., 2009). It is estimated that about 65 per cent of rural women workers are engaged in agriculture as cultivators and agricultural labourers in the country as opposed to 49.8 per cent of male workers. In these capacities, women perform multiple tasks such as land preparation, sowing, transplantation, harvesting and rearing of animals. Most of these operations are labour intensive and not mechanized (Pachauri, 2019). Besides, they are engaged in off-farm domestic activities such as cooking, cleaning, childcare, water and fuel collection and community activities. Shrinking remunerative opportunities in the farming sector has triggered migration of rural male folk to urban areas and also there is a shift in their job priorities to pursue employment in the rural non-farm sector in recent years. Since women did not feature predominantly in either of these trends, most of them are still engaged in agriculture, mostly as labourers and cultivators (Mehrotra, 2020). Vindicated by the fact that the number of female agricultural labourers in India increased by 24 per cent between 2001 and 2011, even though 7.7 million farmers left farming during the corresponding period. During the period when up to 34 per cent of men in rural areas migrated in search of employment and better economic opportunities, the corresponding figure for rural women is merely 3.6 per cent. A recent study of National Sample Survey Office (NSSO) found that 55 per cent of employed women in India

1. Introduction

The world’s temperature has already warmed up to almost 1.2ºC since the preindustrial levels and this warming impact is visible in the form of extreme weather events, sea level rise and diminishing Arctic sea ice. Heat waves and drought in Europe and China, forest fires in the U.S., dust storms and extreme rainfall in India (including the Kerala floods 2018) and high precipitation in Japan and other island nations are all examples of the disasters which have occurred within a single year of 2018. With a further 0.5ºC warming, these effects would be even more pronounced than the scientists’ previous predictions. A 1.5ºC warmer world will see higher temperatures, increase in frequency and intensity of precipitation, higher sea levels, and floods, droughts and heat waves (Venkatesh, 2018). The climate change induced economic damage has been increasing in the past few decades and is likely to continue growing because of population growth, urban development and changing land use pattern (IPCC, 2012). Kerala encountered the most disastrous floods in its history since 1924, between June 1^st and August 19^th of 2018. As the torrential rainfall and associated storm thrashed the state, the entire state got buried under water with only few areas remaining above water. The combined precipitation received by the state during this period was 42 per cent in excess of the typical normal. The exceptional spell of rainfall inflicted heavy damage on the life and properties of thousands of people in the state.

Since 2012, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) has considered gender and climate change as a stand-alone agenda item under the Conference of the Parties. This is because it has been already understood that climate change has a greater impact on those sections of the population which are more reliant on natural resources for their livelihood. People who have the least capacity to respond to natural hazards are also affected

more. Majority of women, who are considered among the poorest of the poor are at a greater disadvantage because their income is mostly derived from informal natural resources dependent livelihoods. Globally, more than 400 million women engage in farm work in more than 90 countries. Agriculture being a climate sensitive sector, climate change takes a huge toll on this area. Women are usually engaged in subsistence agriculture and labor-intensive works which worsens their susceptibility to climatic change (Lambrou and Piana, 2006). Hence, during extreme weather events, women experience greater impacts and vulnerability than men and become economically insecure following disasters.

1. Introduction

“Earth provides enough to satisfy every man’s needs, but not every man’s greed”

Mahatma Gandhi

Natural resources form the core of ecology that is put to economic use. It is usually defined in terms of materials created in nature that are used to satisfy human needs. Soil, water and energy supplies (eg. coal, natural gas) that serve to satisfy human needs and wants comprise the major natural resources (Barsch and Burger, 1996). Based on the impact on an environment, cost of extraction and rate of exhaustion, natural resources are broadly categorized into renewable and non-renewable resources. Major renewable sources comprise of wind, solar energy, tidal energy, geothermal energy, forest etc. which have the potential to be renewed or replaced through natural processes over time, once consumed. Unlike this, nonrenewable resources such as coal, petroleum, natural gas and similar types have finite reserves that cannot be regained once consumed. However, environmental degradation, aggravated by the growing population and climate change vagaries, has intensified the competition for these scarce resources in recent years. This has necessitated sustainable natural resource management strategies and advanced experimentations to convert nonrenewable energy sources to renewable forms as they form the basis of all present day development and economic growth. Increasing demands on natural resources have warranted a more prudent and diligent efforts in ensuring sustainable natural resource management. The dichotomy of unlimited human wants and limited resource availability is at the heart of all natural resource management principles that guide economics of resource allocation and optimum utilization.

1. Introduction

Gender equality in agriculture is a long time demand to achieve the sustainable agricultural development goals. According to the World Bank (2009) differences in the socially constructed gender roles and gender relations affect agricultural development as it creates inequality in the distribution, access to and control over agricultural resources between men and women; that in turn affect the agricultural development outcomes. However, role of men and women in agriculture is not constant across the world due to the disparities existing in the allocation of productive farm resources to women and men among different societies and cultures. Most of the agrarian social systems recognize men as the key players of crop production due to their ownership over agricultural land and other resources. This often masks the significance of activities carried out by farm women in the crop production process. Currently agriculture provides employment to nearly 27.2 percent men and 25.4 percent women globally (World Bank, 2020). Irrespective of the unequal power relations between men and women, their relative representation in the agriculture workforce remained almost equal throughout the years. Hence, it became inevitable to address the concerns of both genders in agriculture rather than concentrating only on women centric issues while formulating programmes and policies aiming agricultural development. These trends in agriculture motivated social researchers like Safiliou (1990) to propose gender as a ‘variable’ similar to ‘social class’ to rationalize agriculture. Globally, gender based researches has covered various dimensions of contributions of men and women in agriculture as cultivators as well as agricultural labours in different time period. However, studies on topics related to women’s rights, women empowerment, and gender equality in order to achieve food security and agricultural development has increasingly been carried out after the “fourth world conference on women: action for equity, development

and peace” held at Beijing (China) during 4-15 September, 1995. Though gender research in agriculture mostly revolves around farm women and their empowerment concepts like marketing extension, market-led extension etc., it has led to the empowerment of both women and men cultivators.

The chapter discusses the concept of gender in research and development, its evolution and its integration into research perspectives in agriculture. A brief description of gender analysis tools is also included.

1. Background

Agriculture sustains 58 per cent of population in India. Productivity and profitability are two major planks for food security and sustainable livelihood of farmers. About 86 per cent of farmers in India own less than two hectors of land. As a result, their marketable surplus is small which poses a major challenge in ensuring remunerative price. Limitations associated with quality of produce, storage, transportation, credit as well as vagaries of weather and market are other related problems. These limitations further aggravate if the producers happen to be women due to their socio-cultural and economic position in the society. Only a decentralised and income assuring approach alone can bring prosperity to the farmers apart from gender equality. This would ultimately propel the agricultural growth of the country.

The chapter discusses one of such approaches called the public private partnership (PPP). It has gained prominence in the wake of the demand for farm reforms, trade, commerce, climate change and gender equality in recent years.

1. Context

Women play a critical role in agriculture, and agriculture continues to remain the major livelihood strategy for women as well as millions of small, marginal and poor farming households in India. Despite this, farm women lack access to extension services as extension programmes rarely identify women as an integral client. Farm women and men have differential needs for knowledge, information, technology and skills as often they are involved in different activities spread over time and cropping seasons. Besides these, men and women farmers have differential access to assets, information, markets, credits, and other services that are necessary for using new knowledge, technologies and skills. Ignoring women while delivering services and technologies creates a gap as many of the agricultural operations are performed by women only.

It is estimated that if women had the same access to productive resources as men, they could increase yields on their farms by 20-30 per cent (FAO, 2011). Yields on plots managed by women are lower than those managed by men, as they do not have the same access to inputs. If they did, their yields would go up, they would produce more, and overall agricultural production would increase. It isn’t merely about enhancing productivity but also about being fair and equitable. Women are a significant part of the agricultural workforce and they deserve to be consulted prior to formulation of agricultural development plans and policies. SDG 5 on Gender Equality “Achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls” is closely aligned to this aspect. Moreover, enhanced access to services can help women grow more food, have more say in the family, and could potentially lead to more income and food in women’s hands-leading to better food security and nutrition for the entire family as they are the major caregivers in the family.

1. Introduction

There is a global evidence of deterioration of nutrition and food security condition following the Pandemic and subsequent economiclockdown (Summerton, 2020; Laborde et al., 2020). In India, the status of nutrition and food security has been a matter of concern for decades. India scored an alarming rankof 102 out of 116 countries in Global Hunger Index (IFPRI, 2019). The problem has also been a gendered one, with an abysmally higher proportion of malnourishment and hunger in women and children in India. As per NFHS 4 (2015-16), every second woman in reproductive age in India was suffering from anaemia, two in five children were suffering from stunting and every tenth child in India was suffering from acute malnourishment (IIPS, 2017). It is not difficult to imagine that this existing malnutrition-crisis has only worsened in the post-lockdown period. There is a consensus among academicians, policy makers and planners that the nutrition crisis needs to be linked to gender-based exclusions & vulnerabilities (Quisumbing et al., 2020). This chapter attempts to discuss some of these complicacies of food-nutrition-gender linkages to put forth gender advocacy for food & nutrition policies.

Evidence of linkages between gender and nutrition are there althoughit is difficult to establish precise empirical connect. Also, the pathways through which gender influences nutrition and food security are multiple and complex. Food/nutrition-policy, therefore, has a long way to go till it is gender-informed. To begin with, the understanding of the concept of gender is limited at the policy-level. Moreover, most of the nutrition-food related policies in India have not mainstreamed gender or are working ina gender-specific manner rather than redistributive manner¹.

It is in this pretext the chapter reviewed the available evidence on gender-nutrition linkages to put forth an argument not only in favour of gender-aware nutrition policies, but also to guide as to how Gender should be integrated. The chapter is structured in five sections with sections that discusses the concept, i.e., importance of context in policy-level for conceptualising gender-needs. This is followed by a review of existing work from a Gender Needs framework and selected empirical evidence from recent primary study of the author are also presented as another separate section. The relevance of reviewing gender-nutrition linkage after COVID19 Pandemic also find place in the chapter. Finally the summary concludes the discussion on gender advocacy in nutrition.

1. Introduction

For a proper understanding and analysis of women’s position in India’s rural economy, we require adequate and good quality data. This chapter examines the limitations of gender-disaggregated data on the rural economy of India with respect to three aspects: the ownership of land and other assets, participation in the rural workforce, and women’s share of agricultural incomes and earnings. In approaching the need for better data on gender, the following features of gender statistics as identified by UN organisations should be kept in mind (Corner undated)

1. Emergence and history of the concept of gender in development

In a chronological point of view it was the period of late 1960s to mid1970s that marked a turning point in development that saw the emergence of gender as an issue of concern. It was during this period that many important publications on psychology of women and gender roles started its manifestation. However, the recurring theme in most of these publications focussed the white male bias in research and research interpretation. Yet, these research publications served as a platform for a thorough discussion of the biological and social factors that contributed to the understanding of psychology of women. The book entitled, The Development of Sex Differences, edited by Maccoby (1966), can be seen as a pivotal moment in the field of gender psychology. The book with several chapters that lay the foundations of children’s gender development focused on theories of gender development. The publication of the book Man and Women, Boy and Girl in the 1970s put forth an advanced theory about gender identity and suggested that social factors played a more significant role in gender identity and gender roles. This sparked the debate of nature - nurture issues which are still significant to this very date. It’s during the same decade that scholars started to challenge the conceptualisations of masculinity and femininity and migrate from the unidimensional simplistic models of bipolar opposites.

Contributions of Carl Gustav Jung (originally Karl Gustav Jung) also had a great role in this migration. Carl Jung’s school of analytical psychology, proposed the concepts of anima and animus. These were part of his theory called collective unconscious which suggests that every woman has an unconscious masculine realm known as animus and every man has an unconscious feminine side known as anima. He postulated that this personal unconscious symbolized prototypical masculine or feminine principles and not an aggregate of either father or mother. It had the potential to transcend to the personal psyche and influence the behavior.

Family No. 1

Name and address:

Smt. Jamuna Khajuriputia

Age - 45 years, Caste - ST

Village – Rajbadei

Block – Similiguda, Koraput

Family size: A total of five members, husband Gopinath (50 years), the son Ramesh and Podu, daughter-in-law Dana and herself. Male : Female ratio is 3:2

Educational status: All members have education except daughter-in-law, Dana. The status score is 4.16 in 10 point scale.

The problems of SHG are many and diversified. The problems vary from place to place and SHG to SHG. Then problems cluster is in relation to economic productivity, overall welfare and livelihood. As we observe since five decades after independence, resistance of people in the state of social, economic, political disempowerment is considered to measure hindrance to overall development. The SHG being a part of society is not an exception to be cited with problem. During investigation the constraints experienced by SHGs members are categorized under five areas namely personal, social, economical, technological and marketing problem. These problem directly and indirectly affects the performance of SHGs. The evidences of past studies and experience in the present context reveal a wide variation in the dimension of the problem.

SWOT analysis is the systematic identification of the internal strength and weakness of an organization or enterprise and environmental opportunities and threats. The analysis is based on the assumption that effective strategy maximizes strength and opportunities and simultaneously minimizes its weakness and threats. Entrepreneurial activities require a SWOT before initiation to provide first hand information about feasibility of the enterprise. All SHGs in rural sector are formed for income generation. A variety of enterprises coming up through SHG in rural sector may or may not be successful. SWOT provides basic direction for entrepreneurship at any level for benefit of the practitioners. The SWOT of SHG in tribal area where study was conducted has been analyzed.

The study is confined to tribal zone of Orissa, especially of Koraput district where tribes account for 49.69% of the district population. The sample SHG were selected from Sadar, Similiguda and Koraput blocks without any prejudice to their performance. At the outset, it is admitted that SHG has created a sensation among the tribes to look forward the development process. The present study ‘SHG in Techno-Economic Empowerment of Tribal Women’ has been conceived to find out inter-play of technological and economic variables that reflect in social status.

Membership status

SHG starts with the philosophy of micro-approach. Small sized group dynamics, available technology and economic opportunity linked with market structure are the perceived objectives to bring change in livelihood system. The study considered the age of SHG, present membership status, rate of discontinuance as the basic factors of SHG in tribal zone.

Motives of joining SHG

Sensitization for joining SHG does not alone help to achieve immediate result. Motives when combined with inspiration, an individual is tempted to act so also the case with sample SHG who expressed motives for joining SHG as follows.

Concept and Meaning of Empowerment Meaning and definition

Women empowerment has been widely recognized as an important goal in global development process. The term “empowerment” was coined in the second half of the seventeenth century (Oxford English Dictionary). It gained momentum in USA in 1960s when the activists of Black Panat Movement used the term ‘empowerment’ in the context of political mobilization. In 1980s the term was adopted by NGOs worldwide to signify an alternative development agenda for poverty alleviation based on principles of participation and self help. During this period, the participation and self help came to forefront. There after it has entered many fields of theory and practice. Since 1980s, the world has witnessed the concept, used to describe this phenomenon (empowerment).

The voiceless and powerless are the common elements that need the concept of empowerment in terms of socio-economic, technological, cultural and political development. In the context of power, empowerment depends on two things. These are: power can change and power can extend. The concept came to exist that power can change and power can extend giving the term ‘empowerment’ as the power is created in relationship, power and power relationship can certainly change. Therefore, empowerment simply is a process of change.

The study entitled “SHG in Techno Economic Empowerment of Tribal Women” was conducted on the following specific objectives.

Empowerment of women in relation to SHG (ii) Profile of SHG

Structure and functions of SHG

SWOT analysis of SHG

Constraints of SHG and suggestion

Case studies