Men are setting off to find work in cities, and women are being left holding the sickle – how can we help them?
"I can see the strain when I go back to the farms," says Palagummi Sainath. "Women have always done the bulk of work in agriculture, but post-2008, things have changed. There’s been a male exodus, and the roles that men were doing in agriculture are now sitting on women’s shoulders. People are cracking."
The award-winning Sainath, who specialises in rural affairs and has spent most of the last 20 years in the Indian countryside, now says the burden on rural women has been getting steadily worse in recent years, with many now reaching breaking point.
Women have never been strangers to farm work in India, which has an estimated 77 million female farmers, but the country has recently witnessed a turning point in its migration trends. Its latest census, in 2011, showed for the first time since independence that urban populations are growing faster than rural ones. "The men are going first, and in larger numbers," says Sainath. "And the roles that men were doing in agriculture are now sitting on women’s shoulders."
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