Discuss how land-ownership-linked definitions of 'farmer' have historically excluded women from agricultural welfare schemes in India. Examine the significance of Maharashtra's Women Farmers' Empowerment Bill (2026) in this context.

The National Policy for Farmers, 2007 — framed after the Swaminathan-led National Commission on Farmers — deliberately widened "farmer" to cover cultivators, tenants, sharecroppers and labourers, not merely landowners [1]. Welfare delivery, however, continued to run on land records, leaving most women who farm institutionally invisible. Maharashtra's 2026 Bill is the first State attempt to convert that definition into enforceable identity.

How land-linked definitions excluded women

• Ownership skew: female operational holders accounted for only about 11.72% of operated area in the Agriculture Census 2015-16 [2] — so a land-based test structurally screens women out.
• Documentary gatekeeping: under PM-KISAN, cultivable landholding is the eligibility test, with mandatory land-seeding against State land-revenue records [3]; women cultivating family or leased land fail it despite farming.
• Tenancy blind spot: the Centre has stated there is no proposal to extend PM-KISAN to tenant farmers [4] — excluding the oral, undocumented tenancies women typically work under, and with it KCC credit, insurance and subsidies.
• Recognition without identity: MKSP under DAY-NRLM supported 4.62 crore Mahila Kisans [5], yet conferred training, not legal farmer status revocable only by law.

Significance of the Maharashtra Bill, 2026

• Operationalises the 2007 land-delinked definition through a Woman Farmer Certificate, granting "farmer" status irrespective of ownership — a statutory right, harder to withdraw than a scheme.
• Legitimises the feminisation of agriculture and creates a countable database of women farmers for targeted delivery.
• Economically consequential: FAO estimates equal access to resources could raise output on women's farms by 20-30% in developing countries [6].

Caveats it must overcome: Central schemes still check land records, so the certificate binds only if the Centre accepts it as proof; and activity-verification must rest on village-level Krishi Sakhi networks [5] rather than revenue records, else old exclusions return.

The Bill shifts recognition from title to toil. Paired with Centre-level acceptance for PM-KISAN and KCC, and with Kudumbashree-style recorded group leasing, it can make identity translate into resources — advancing Article 15(3)'s promise of substantive equality for India's women farmers.