 Hi, I'm Dimple Treaser and I work at the Center for Women's Development Studies in Delhi. I'm at this conference to present my paper on women's collectives. Women collectives who are involved in farming on leased in lands. Now, when you look at leased in lands, it means it's borrowed lands. It is not something you own. You have no ownership. You are not the owner. You lease in land for a period of time at whatever negotiated or agreed upon lease rates. So, some of the time the lease rate may be a share of the produce or share of the harvest. At other times, in fact, that is the most common lease agreement in India which is called sharecropping. Commonly in India, Bihar is one of the states which have largest number of sharecroppers where 50% is on an average the agreement with the land owner and the sharecropper. Now, my study is from Kerala and on the groups of women, groups which are ranging from 4 to 5 members who have leased in lands all across the state, there are more than 65,000 women groups now in Kerala of this size who have been leasing in land for the last 5, 6 years. And they've been supported by this program called Kudumbasri. Now, Kudumbasri is a poverty eradication program that the Kerala government has supported and nurtured over now 18 years since 1998. And it is in 2004 they started with this land recognizing that lot of land was being left fallow and this could be utilized because land is an asset as well as a productive resource which has to be utilized and if the land owner doesn't want to cultivate it, why not give it on lease to somebody who is interested. And therefore, Kudumbasri supported this program, asked the women if they were interested and number of groups are cultivating. So, the major crops grown up, paddy, banana, vegetables, these are the major crops and then there are certain regions like Anatolium district which have large number of pineapple farmers. So, my study was looking at the economic returns, what the women were earning from this cultivation and I looked at both paddy farmers as well as pineapple farmers. And the overall income that the women generated was much higher in pineapple. In spite of the lease terms being substantially high, if you look at what were their background because most of them were landless, many of them had their husbands or their fathers in informal jobs like they were drivers or they were painters or plumbers and these women earlier were some of them were working as agriculture workers but they weren't getting enough of jobs anymore because Kerala being was earlier an agrarian economy but over time it has shifted out and most of the household, rural households who have land just do not cultivate it because they have gone into non-farm occupation. Many people have also gone in for you know migrated out to either to the US or to the Middle East so they have their land here which is left uncultivated. So, that is why there is the land that is available and the women from lower income strata who are able to lease in and this is a great initiative and it has been in my opinion I think a kind of a success because Kudimusri also made available lot of support in the sense that the women were given agriculture loans at 7% interest rate in which the state subsidized some of the interest that was like they gave a subsidy of 5% meaning just at 2% rates they were able to get the agriculture loans and they also give lot of marketing support to market their produce that was a huge initiative and the most important initiative was the there was a community based structure that is you must have heard about the self-help group concept the self-help groups of women so Kudimusri also grew that network of women you know so 50% of the households in rural Kerala are members of Kudimusri network so that itself was a huge support. So, these have led to women entering into farming and gaining such a huge foothold and recognition as farmers in the state of Kerala which earlier they many of them were just agriculture laborers you know and so there is also lot of pride in the women in the fact that they are cultivators they are actually farmers and not just working on somebody's land so even though they have just leased in the land they feel the pride in them is so much more than just being a laborer working on someone else's farm so they are taking so what is happening now is from major laborers they are becoming self-employed to work on a piece of land it is an agriculture enterprise they are basically running they have to make sure they get the credit they get the inputs everything in time they get the water and they have to grow the crop and they have to finally market the crop at whatever is the price that is because pineapple crop has you know the price fluctuates according to the market prices so it may fluctuate anything from 12 to 36 or 40 rupees so you have to coincide your harvest with the time when the prices are high so all these risk they are taking which they didn't have to take as wage laborers but now since they don't have that option of wage laborer you know they don't have enough opportunity to work as agriculture laborers this is opening up an avenue for earning an income to support their households so I think it's a great initiative and those Kerala has a different context it is kind of it can work out in other parts of India and other parts of the world where you know you can develop this type of initiatives thank you