Welcome to Landesa Foundation for Innovations in Development
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The #1 predictor of poverty in India is landlessness. Secure land rights are an essential solution.
Landesa Foundation for Innovations in Development partners with government, civil society, and the private sector to improve livelihoods, promote gender equity, and eliminate rural poverty.
About Us
Landesa Foundations for Innovations in Development (LFID) supports both national and state governments in India to develop innovative land laws and programmes to help India in its fight against poverty. The cornerstone for these efforts: strengthening land rights for rural women and men through improvements in law and policy, enhanced government capacity, increased land literacy and training, and women's empowerment efforts.
We’ve learned that when a family has land of their own, they have opportunity and the means to improve nutrition, income, shelter. We’ve seen that when land rights are secure, the cycle of poverty is broken – for an individual, a family, a village, and a community.
Broadly, distributed land rights provide structural change that is enduring and multi-generational, which leads to long-term systemic change, not short-term relief. Secure land rights foster the tangible benefits of ownership that are necessary for sustainable poverty alleviation.
Our Approach
DELIVERING CHANGE AT SCALE
LFID builds trust with government and policy makers by researching and reporting on rural conditions, recommending appropriate policy changes, and supporting effective implementation. By focusing on large-scale, we help governments systematically improve overall land governance and provision of land services to large numbers of rural families.
A SOCIAL AND GENDER LENS
LFID works with rural communities to understand the additional challenges rural women face in realizing land rights and thriving fully. We then work with government and other partners to explore solutions that overcome these barriers. Because gender discrimination is so ingrained in social systems, addressing it requires more than legal change.
BUILDING CAPACITY & UNDERSTANDING
LFID offers expertise and training to help land administration officials improve their understanding of land regulations, and encourage them to prioritize and respect poor rural women and men.
IMPROVING LAND LITERACY
LFID creates simple learning modules, tailored to the local context, to help rural women understand the value of land rights and learn how to navigate the land administration system.
ROOTED IN RESEARCH
LFID conducts quantitative and qualitative research on rural land rights with a strong gender lens, and uses this learning to directly inform our work.
COLLABORATIVE APPROACH
LFID collaborates with Indian research institutions and helps other civil society organizations understand and integrate land rights perspectives into their work.
Our Work
LFID’s planned work includes four overlapping focus areas:
1. Land governance
Correct and updated land records help reduce disputes, facilitate land markets and land use planning, and support implementation of meaningful land tenure reforms.
Illustrative examples of land records work LFID plans to undertake in coming years includes helping government improve:
systems for correcting land records for rural women and men
systems for titling rural “abadi” residential lands to protect the poor
2. Land leasing
Correct and updated land records help reduce disputes, facilitate land markets and land use planning, and support implementation of meaningful land tenure reforms.
Illustrative examples of land records work LFID plans to undertake in coming years includes helping government improve:
systems for correcting land records for rural women and men
systems for titling rural “abadi” residential lands to protect the poor
3. Women’s land rights
Stronger rights to land have the power to radically transform a woman’s life. Ownership of land strengthens women's sense of identity, provides a basis for economic independence and increases participation in household decision making.
Illustrative examples of women’s land rights work Landesa plans to undertake in coming years includes the following:
Collaborate with state networks to promote stronger inheritance rights to women and girls through laws and policies
Help governments provide land literacy training to women and girls and establish innovative models to help women gain ownership of land
Promote women’s leadership in rural land administration reforms to effect norm change and normalize land ownership by women
4. Ecological livelihoods
When land rights are secure and clear, people are more inclined to invest in improvements to build soil health, plant trees, make judicious use of agrochemicals, and follow environmentally effective crop rotations.
Illustrative examples of ecological livelihoods work Landesa plans to undertake in coming years includes:
Promote restoration and protection of mangroves to secure livelihoods and ecological resiliency
Collaborate with institutions that have expertise in community management of watersheds to combine titling of forest land with watershed restoration efforts
Help us make a difference
Would you like to help support LFID’s work in India?
You can donate by scanning the QR code, clicking the button below, or you can reach out to info@lfid.in for more information.
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