India’s Quiet Women Farmers Slip Into Crisis -Khabar Lahariya & Abheet S Sethi

Chitrakoot (UP)/ Kota (Rajasthan)/ Mumbai: Slight and dark, Shyampati, 30, leaned against a house made fragile from unseasonal rain, and talked animatedly about life as a farmer, labourer, goat-herder, mother of four, main wage-earner and full-time housewife.

Here in her rain-washed, poor village in western Uttar Pradesh’s Chitrakoot district-and across the northern plains and southern plateau-Shyampati (she uses only one name) represents a hidden Indian demographic: the Indian women farmer, almost never publicly acknowledged, reviled by superstition and patriarchy, and increasingly troubled.

Please click here to read more.