Land Alienation and Access To Common Property Resources among Tribal Agricultural Labourers of Wayanad District: A Critical Gender Analysis

Abstract

The present investigation has been done on the basis of qualitative and quantitative data collected from primary sources and explored the land alienation and land ownership status of tribal agricultural labourers. It also investigates how social discrimination aggravates the extent of land alienation and influence the land ownership and access to common property resources among the tribal people. While considering the inter-community disparity in land ownership, Kurichiya community owned more land than Paniya community, whereas, Kattunaikan owned no land and remained landless. Majority of the tribal people, especially women experienced high degree of land alienation. The major methods of land alienation identified were marriage of tribal women with non-tribal men, mortgaging the land by the tribal people to the non-tribal people in return for credit. The major consequences of land alienation as perceived by the tribal agricultural labourers were widening gap between the rich and the poor tribal people, increased poverty, exploitation, confrontation between tribal and non-tribal people, migration, law and order problem in tribal areas and marginalization and exclusion. In the case of access to common property resources, Kurichiya community had better access to community well/ tap, forest produces, common land resources and water resources than Paniya and Kattunaikan communities.