This month, 600 women gathered under a huge blue-and-yellow-striped tent in Baripada, a small city in Odisha, a state in India’s east. They were among India’s most neglected people. Widowed, abandoned or divorced, many had ended up living like servants in the households of their fathers, brothers or in-laws.
But on March 5, each woman clutched a single light-green sheet of paper that would change her life: a patta, or title to a small plot of land. The women were among 1,800 getting pattas that day across the district. The documents were hard-won. The battle for women’s land rights in India pits progressive law against oppressive culture — and the culture has largely prevailed. But the pattas show that small victories for law are also possible.

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