“After the forest department auction, women get only a small proportion of the money,” says Premila Ben, busy adding jaggery to the mahua flowers she picked earlier that morning. This concoction will be left to ferment and once it turns to alcohol, it will be sold. While her husband, Ashok Bhai, has not yet auctioned the maliki wood on his land, Premila Ben has witnessed gender discrimination in the division of the sales proceeds in her parents’ home.
“There, even though I am legally one of the owners of land, when my uncles auctioned trees for about ₹2 lakh, I got only ₹5000,” she says. “It all depends on the men; they give whatever amount they deem fit to women after auctions.”
The legal ownership that Premila Ben is referring to is under the Hindu Succession Act, which, in its 2005 amendment, gives sons and daughters equal rights to the inheritance of ancestral property.
Premila Ben’s experience resonated in conversations with other women in Dang too. Rachita Ben Thakre, Premila Ben’s neighbour, is sitting on the porch of the pucca house that she and her husband have just finished building. Her father’s 1-hectare land has about 300-350 trees of teak But after his death, his brother has been taking all the decisions related to the property. “The last time my uncle sold the maliki wood, I got just ₹500. Can you imagine that?” Rachita Ben says. The total earnings from that sale came to over ₹10 lakh.
Premila Ben glances at the boundary wall she shares with her latest project—an under-construction English and Gujarati-medium school. As the lockdown paused the construction work, the income from the ancestral land would have been critical for the family.
The sale of maliki wood is a complex process. Even if the trees grow on private lands, their cutting has to be permitted by the state forest department, as we said earlier. The Gujarat government, under the Saurashtra Felling of Trees (Infliction of Punishment) Act, 1951, put certain trees on privately owned land under the reserved category, to ensure state ‘control and regulation’ of commercial trees.
Under the maliki process, the entire revenue goes to the owner but in two tranches: 25% within three months and the remaining, after certain conditions are met. For every tree cut, three saplings have to be planted, and at one point no more than 10 trees can be cut.