The Impact of Green Revolution on Adivasi Women of Eastern India

When we talk about agricultural labour, woman labour has a special significance. In India, the labour force is largely masculine, with only one out of every four workers being a female. Despite women's significant and crucial role in agricultural development and allied fields, they have virtually no access to agricultural information, services or production assets and have very limited control over their earnings. Though Green Revolution technologies enhanced agricultural productivity, they also widened economic disparities and deepened gender discrimination in community life. Tribal women have always had a close relationship with the trees and the forests and traditionally they have gathered products, which have provided them with the basic three ‘Fs’ of Fuel, Food and Fodder and for a variety of other uses, whereas men consider the forest more in terms of commercial possibilities, women see it as a source of basic domestic need. Women's marginalisation has resulted in losing their control over land and forest as a means of production, this is evident from the fact that the number of the tribal female cultivators has dropped, and it is further aggravated by the differential wages in agricultural labour. Technological changes emanated from Green Revolution have generated major social benefits but at the same time generated significant costs for particular categories of rural women, the tribal women, that are different in kind and in intensity from those experienced by men.