WEST BENGAL – Despite ongoing lockdown measures, our India team has completed two major virtual trainings on women’s land rights for hundreds of government officials over the last month. By switching to remote trainings, we can continue making progress on strengthening women’s land rights and scaling reforms with our government partners across the country.

In September, we held an orientation for 346 district-level representatives who will subsequently train thousands of village-level representatives on women’s land rights. This session maintains momentum on a land literacy program that will reach over 1 million women in village self-help groups (community-level groups that offer training and support for women).

Women attending a self-help group in India.

Additionally, last week Landesa livestreamed a virtual training for 145 panchayat (local government) officials on correctly issuing inheritance certificates and land titles in women’s names (pictured above). It is not uncommon for women to be deprived of their legal inheritance only because of an incorrect certificate. Each of the trained officials will take the lead on generating new records of rights in their districts, which will ultimately impact approximately 7.25 million households. After the session, several officials shared that they now feel more empowered to make sure women receive land through inheritance and land title distribution.

Throughout the pandemic, we’ve worked with our partners to actively adapt approaches – distributing PPE to land and forestry officials, providing resources and expertise on adopting virtual tools, organizing collaborative webinars – to maintain momentum towards advancing inclusive land rights at scale.