Recognising the Invisible Farmer: Maharashtra's Women Farmers Empowerment Act, 2026

1. Recognising the Invisible Farmer: Maharashtra's Women Farmers Empowerment Act, 2026

Basic Concept

In India's revenue and agricultural policy, a person is conventionally recognised as a 'farmer' through land records — the khatedar or the holder of the 7/12 extract in Maharashtra. This land-title-based definition excludes the vast majority of women who work in agriculture as cultivators, unpaid family labour, sharecroppers, or livestock keepers but rarely hold land in their own name, since inheritance in India still overwhelmingly favours male lineage. This mismatch between who actually performs farm work and who is legally recognised as a farmer is central to the phenomenon of the 'feminisation of agriculture', accelerated by male out-migration to non-farm and urban jobs. The National Policy for Farmers, 2007 had already tried to correct this by defining 'farmer' broadly — covering crop husbandry, animal husbandry, poultry, fisheries, agro-forestry, vermiculture, mushroom cultivation and primary processing, whether as owner or as labourer — but without a legal mechanism to certify this status, most women remained invisible to the welfare and credit system. The subject cuts across GS Paper I (women and society), GS Paper II (government policies and welfare schemes for vulnerable sections) and GS Paper III (land reforms, agricultural credit and inclusive growth).

Core Context

Maharashtra enacted the Maharashtra Women Farmers Empowerment Act, 2026 in July 2026, becoming the first state in India to give women farmers independent legal recognition through a 'Woman Farmer Certificate' (WFC), obtainable without requiring land title in the woman's name — a milestone that coincides with 2026 being observed as the United Nations' International Year of the Woman Farmer. Through September 2026, the state moved from legislation to implementation: Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis announced on 19 September 2026 that the Women Farmer Certificate scheme was being rolled out through a dedicated online self-registration portal, allowing eligible women to apply using Aadhaar-based verification without visiting a government office, with registration drives now active across districts.

Latest Developments

• The online portal (hosted under the state's Mahakrishi digital agriculture platform) lets a woman engaged in farming self-register using her Aadhaar number; on verification, the state issues her an official Woman Farmer Certificate.

• Holding a WFC makes a woman independently eligible for Agriculture Department welfare schemes, state agricultural corporation benefits, capital subsidies on farm equipment, crop insurance, and easier access to institutional bank credit — benefits that were earlier gate-kept by land-ownership proof.

• The Act creates a dedicated administrative architecture: a State Women Farmers Empowerment Cell, district- and sub-district-level designated officers, a centralised digital registry of certified women farmers, a State-Level Monitoring Committee headed by the Chief Secretary, and an apex Governing Council chaired by the Chief Minister.

• The Act's definition of 'woman farmer' draws directly on the National Policy for Farmers, 2007, covering women engaged in crop husbandry, animal husbandry, poultry, fishery, agro-forestry, vermiculture, mushroom cultivation and primary processing, whether as owner-cultivators or as agricultural labour.

• Context from labour data underscores why this matters: per the Periodic Labour Force Survey (2025), about 82% of Maharashtra's rural female workforce is engaged in agriculture, against roughly 58% of rural men; at the all-India level, PLFS 2023-24 data shows over three-fourths of rural working women are in agriculture. Yet the Agriculture Census 2015-16 found that women operate only around 14% of agricultural landholdings nationally, and women make up only about 23% of beneficiaries under the central PM-KISAN scheme — a gap this certificate is designed to close by de-linking benefit eligibility from land title.

• The state law is designed to work alongside existing central interventions such as the Mahila Kisan Sashaktikaran Pariyojana (MKSP), a sub-component of the Deendayal Antyodaya Yojana-National Rural Livelihoods Mission (DAY-NRLM), and the Krishi Sakhi Convergence Programme, which trains rural women as community agriculture extension workers and is linked to the 'Lakhpati Didi' initiative; some other states, such as Uttar Pradesh, separately offer stamp-duty concessions on agricultural land registered in a woman's name.

• The Act is also positioned as flowing from Maharashtra's Fourth Women's Policy (2024), which had flagged land and resource access as a core gender-equity gap in the state's rural economy.

UPSC Prelims Pointers

• The Maharashtra Women Farmers Empowerment Act, 2026 is the first dedicated state law in India granting legal recognition to women farmers independent of land ownership.

• The certificate it creates is called the Woman Farmer Certificate (WFC); it can be obtained via self-registration on an Aadhaar-linked online portal, without a land title.

• The Act's definition of 'woman farmer' is based on the National Policy for Farmers, 2007.

• 2026 is being observed as the United Nations' International Year of the Woman Farmer.

• As per the Agriculture Census 2015-16, women operate only about 14% of India's agricultural landholdings.

• The Mahila Kisan Sashaktikaran Pariyojana (MKSP) functions as a sub-component of DAY-NRLM, under the Ministry of Rural Development.

• Women constitute roughly 23% of beneficiaries under the PM-KISAN scheme nationally.