(Women farmers at Sanand APMC Mandi in Ahmedabad district, Gujarat./ Photographs by Meenakshi Kapoor )
Ahmedabad: Lassu Ben, 38, is an outspoken and resolute woman but even she sometimes hesitates...
Read moreNew Delhi: If it were not for the pandemic, Raju Ben Vasava’s grandchildren would be at school. But, schools are shut, and Raju Ben, 55, is baby-sitting for the day. The children are a talkative bunch, taking time off only to munch on their freshly-picked pink guavas. This is Kandbudi, a village in Southern Gujarat’s Tapi district, and here, children did have easy access to schools before the pandemic hit...
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New Delhi: On May 14, 2021, while encouraging farmers to take up organic farming as he released the 8th instalment of the Pradhan Mantri- Kisan Samman Nidhi (PM-KISAN), Prime Minister Narendra Modi had said: “Is prakar ki faslon mein laagat bhi kam hai; yeh mitti aur insaan ke swasthya ke liye labhdayak hain aur inki keemat bhi zyada milti hai (These (organic) crops require less investment...”
Read moreNew Delhi: Mangla Hira Ji Thakre (45) and her family are sprawled around the television for their post-dinner ritual of watching a hit soap opera. “Arey, this hero has not changed his shirt in seven days!” jokes Mangla. “Maybe his village does not have enough water for his wife to wash clothes everyday,” her sister-in-law Premila Ben Thakre (45) shoots back.
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Shankuben Rabari insists she is 40 years old.
She has grey hair, a deeply wrinkled face and arms dotted with the green tattoos distinctive to elderly women in her community. Shankuben snaps at anyone who suggests she must be at least 60.
Read moreIt may not be apparent from her short build, soft voice or sorrowful brown eyes. For some members of her family though, her presence in the village is terrifying enough to provoke them into violence.
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Ahmedabad: “We were happy -- we wouldn’t have to work in others’ fields anymore. We were going to be farmers,” says Daksha Ben Babu Bhai Parmar, a Dalit farmer, recalling how her family had rejoiced at being allotted a 3-acre plot...
Read moreGeeta Ben Gamit, 42, is a busy woman. The Sarpanch ( village council head) of Bhatpur in Tapi district in South Gujarat was finishing signing papers for the construction of a new meeting hall in her Panchayat ( the lowest tier of governance), when we met her on a hot March afternoon in her office in this tribal district.
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It has been years since the women of Bilmarh, a village on a small hillock some 25 km from Ahwa, the district headquarters of the Dangs, have had a peaceful night’s sleep....
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