Dated:25th June 2026
SIGMA Foundation recently conducted a study with support from Landesa, an organization which works on land rights across the world. To examine the land rights of tribal women and land related conflicts that adversely affect the tribal women. The study was for tribal women living in Jharkhand. The study included analysis of secondary data, including media on land disputes, and collection of primary data from Lohardaga and Gumla districts. The study sought to understand the current status of land rights for tribal women in the region, how customary practices affect their land rights, to what extent witch hunting is associated with land issues and how administration of land protects the rights of tribal women.
The study aimed to understand the legal framework, map different types of land issues and associated violence, and examine key land regulatory frameworks — including the Chotanagpur Tenancy (CNT) Act, Santhal Parganas Tenancy (SPT) Act, Panchayats (Extension to Scheduled Areas) Act (PESA), and the Forest Rights Act (FRA) — with the goal of developing a policy brief to support programmatic and policy engagement.
SIGMA’s research team began with an intensive secondary literature review, systematically examining over 400 Hindi newspaper articles on land related violence across seven regional newspapers published between 2023 and 2025, all related to land violence. The patterns that emerged were corroborated through an extensive review of secondary literature on land rights, forest rights, land governance systems, and their implications in Jharkhand. Together, these two streams of evidence provided a clearer picture of the present status of land rights in the CNT region.
The research team subsequently conducted field validation in Lohardaga and Gumla, engaging with a range of stakeholders — from key government officials, police to women survivors of land rights violations and facing allegations like witchcraft and documented case stories. The findings have been compiled into a report which also include key recommendation to be acted upon in the short, medium and the long-term.
SIGMA Foundation is glad to have worked in partnership with Landesa on this important stud and to bring out new evidence on a subject which is under-researched and less understood.