Five women sing a Bihu song or two as they work in paddy fields in Assam’s Jorhat district. The first few in a series of songs that together archive the many shades of agrarian life in the region
July 15, 2025 | Himanshu Chutia Saikia
Women farmers in Dindori district of Madhya Pradesh have come together to form the Halchalit Mahila Kisan Women Producer Company that is encouraging organic and natural methods of farming among its members
March 29, 2025 | Namita Waikar
Marginalised women farmers in the agriculturally distressed regions of Maharashtra, are turning to traditional foods. PARI presents a film on International Women’s Day, 8 March, 2025
March 8, 2025 | Kavita Carneiro
In Madhya Pradesh’s Panna district, a women farmers’ cooperative with Dalit, Adivasi and OBC women is taking charge of their earnings from the land, and their numbers are growing
January 30, 2025 | Priti David
Adivasi women are the force behind the comeback of heirloom seeds and organic farming in Alirajpur and Dewas districts of Madhya Pradesh
January 16, 2025 | Rohit J.
An Adivasi woman farmer, Gulabrani started the organic revolution in her village in Panna district
January 12, 2025 | Priti David
Mal Pahariya Adivasi women working in the onion fields of West Bengal's Murshidabad district explain their priorities – work, food, then vote – in the run up to the General Elections 2024
May 21, 2024 | Smita Khator
Marching to the historic Ramlila Maidan in Delhi were thousands of farmers and workers attending the Kisan Mazdoor Mahapanchayat, held on March 14, 2024. They demanded that the union government fulfil its many promises to make farming incomes both sustainable and equitable for all cultivators, especially women
March 29, 2024 | Namita Waikar
An ancient oilseed, sesame is a kitchen staple in India. Yet very little is known about its cultivation and the life of the farmers who bring this fragrant oil to the table
October 23, 2023 | Aparna Karthikeyan
Suman Sambre has experienced the suicides of two family members. An agricultural worker in Vasai taluka, this single mother of five, says she has no time to grieve
September 15, 2023 | Naomi Fargose
The most basic needs of accessing a toilet during working hours is a daily challenge and a health hazard for many women labourers in tea gardens in Jalpaiguri, West Bengal
March 23, 2023 | Adhyeta Mishra
It has been 13 years since farmer Kamal Chandra’s suicide in Chiltampalle village. His wife Parameshwari is still struggling to repay his loans from private moneylenders for which she has no written records
March 17, 2023 | Amrutha Kosuru
Tenant farmers and agricultural labourers in Kolhapur district are struggling with mental health issues as excessive rainfall and flooding repeatedly destroy their crops and livelihoods
November 30, 2022 | Sanket Jain
J. Adaikalaselvi, a farmer in Ramanathapuram, Tamil Nadu’s top chilli -producing district, takes us through the hurdles in producing the lucrative crop: price fluctuations, water scarcity and climate change
July 6, 2022 | Aparna Karthikeyan
Bhabani Mahato strongly disavows any role in the freedom struggle. But on learning her story at her home in West Bengal's Puruliya district, we conclude otherwise and marvel at her sacrifice for the struggle
April 18, 2022 | P. Sainath
Women agricultural labourers like Mangala Harijan, who migrate to work as hand-pollinators in Karnataka's Haveri district, earn meagre sums of money despite toiling for the billion-dollar seed industry
November 17, 2021 | S.Senthalir
Caught in a cycle of debt and poverty, Ratnavva Harijan, an expert hand-pollinator in Karnataka's Haveri district, is doing everything she can to educate her children – including taking on casteist customs
October 20, 2021 | S.Senthalir
His arm on her shoulder, she guides his steps – this husband and wife team in Madurai faces life together despite the odds. But poverty, poor health and disability make their daily existence hard
September 1, 2021 | M. Palani Kumar
On the banks of the Cauvery in Tamil Nadu's Karur district, women have been cutting korai for decades to earn a living and feed their families. The work is hard, the toll on their health high
April 9, 2021 | M. Palani Kumar
Kusum Sonawane, a 72-year-old farmer from Pune district, sings about women’s unending and unvalued work – and the many facets of their life from birth to adulthood
March 12, 2021 | Namita Waikar, PARI GSP Team
Sonia Petwar, Shanti Devi and other women in Haryana’s Petwar village have been supporting the farmers' agitation in their own way – by sending rations to Tikri and even attending the protests
February 17, 2021 | Sanskriti Talwar
Arunabai and Shashikala – both widows from Adivasi communities, and farmers and farm labourers in Aurangabad district – came to Mumbai to protest against the new farm laws and demand their land titles
February 8, 2021 | Riya Behl
Adivasi farmers Anusaya Kumare and Sarajabai Ade have been protesting since January for their land rights in Maharashtra's Sarkhani village; they joined the Mumbai sit-in to oppose the three new farm laws
February 8, 2021 | Shraddha Agarwal
Women farmers and farm workers who have been fighting for their land rights, were protesting in Mumbai against the new farm laws so they don't lose out more from the sale of farm produce below the MSP
February 1, 2021 | Sanket Jain
On January 18, Mahila Kisan Diwas, women farmers and farm labourers from the villages of West Bengal came to Kolkata to protest against the new farm laws and to voice several other concerns
January 28, 2021 | Smita Khator
To help 10-year-old Nutan learn about Adivasi farmers' concerns at a young age, her grandmother Jijabai brought her along on the march from Nashik to Mumbai, protesting against the new farm laws
January 28, 2021 | Parth M.N.
Despite land rights being the main concern for Bhima Tandale, Suman Bombale and Lakshmi Gaikwad – Adivasi farm widows from Nashik – they are in Mumbai to support the protest against the new farm laws
January 26, 2021 | Parth M.N.
Sarbjeet Kaur drove her tractor for more than 400 kilometres from her village in Punjab to the Singhu farmers’ protest site, and is now ready to participate in the tractor rally on January 26
January 25, 2021 | Snighdha Sony
At the Tikri protest site in west Delhi, 70-year-old Taravanti Kaur is one of the many Dalit farm labourers from Punjab who believe that the centre's new laws will push them further into poverty
January 21, 2021 | Sanskriti Talwar
Women are central to agriculture in India, and many – farmers as well as non-farmers, young and old, across class and caste lines – are present and resolute at the farmers' protest sites around Delhi
January 16, 2021 | Shraddha Agarwal
Resham and Beant Kaur, who are among the protestors at Delhi's borders, emphasise that the farm laws will impact the livelihoods and food security of innumerable households of farm labourers, like their own family
January 16, 2021 | Sanskriti Talwar
Savita Gunjal, a 16-year-old Bhil Adivasi farm labourer and singer-composer from Nashik district, kept everyone’s spirits and resolve high on the jatha to Delhi by Maharashtra farmers with her wonderful songs
December 31, 2020 | Shraddha Agarwal
Mangal Ghadge and Mirabai Lange of Nashik district have forged a friendship while participating in farmers' protests over the years – and they were also together at the vehicle march this week from Nashik to Delhi
December 24, 2020 | Parth M.N.
Kondra Sagarika's husband died by suicide in 2017, leaving her with two little kids and lakhs in farm debt. Since then, despite health issues, and without much state or family support, she works hard as a labourer
December 22, 2020 | Riya Behl
Women are central to agriculture in India, but are rarely recognised as farmers – many of them came together in Pune last week supporting the call to scrap the new farm laws and voiced other demands
December 18, 2020 | Vidya Kulkarni
Laxmi Tudu has faced many losses over five years – her husband died, then her brother-in-law and, recently, her daughter. Through all this, she has laboured to support her children, holding on to a handful of hopes
December 22, 2020 | Saurabh Sarmadhikari
On November 26, farmers from Adivasi communities gathered for a rasta roka in Maharashtra's Palghar district, in solidarity with the ongoing protests in Haryana-Delhi, and with their own 21-demand charter
November 28, 2020 | Shraddha Agarwal
With kharif cultivation of paddy underway, labourers are back in the fields of Dhamtari in Chhattisgarh. They know about Covid-19 precautions, but say they can't afford to not work
August 8, 2020 | Purusottam Thakur
In Odisha’s Kandhamal district, Adivasi women have preserved indigenous seeds for generations; at an annual festival, they come together to discuss and exchange seeds through rituals and celebration
July 18, 2020 | Rakhi Ghosh
A chemical-intensive Bt cotton monoculture is spreading through Odisha’s Rayagada district – harming health, deepening debt, irreversibly eroding indigenous knowledge, and sowing the seeds of a climate crisis
October 7, 2019 | Aniket Aga, Chitrangada Choudhury
Earlier this year, Kamala Pujhari of Odisha's Koraput district received the Padma Shri for her work on seed conservation – an uphill task when many varieties of paddy in her village have vanished
June 12, 2019 | Harinath Rao Nagulavancha
An anganwadi job, household tasks, fetching water, collecting firewood, farm work, gathering fruit – and more. Lilabai Memane of Phalode village redefines the terms 'working woman' and 'multi-tasking'
January 8, 2019 | Minaj Latkar
Farmers from Shimla district, who came to Delhi for the Kisan Mukti Morcha on November 29-30, remind us in the video featured here that the bulk of work in agriculture is done by women
December 21, 2018 | Subuhi Jiwani
C. Alivelamma, a tenant farmer, hopes no more farmers are driven to suicide like her husband was
November 29, 2018 | Rahul M.
Tens of thousands of farm widows in Maharashtra – all of them farmers too – find themselves in a morass of loss, grief, debt, penury, harassment, and miles of paperwork and bureaucracy, after their husbands' suicides
November 23, 2018 | Sharmila Joshi
Many Adivasis have lost their land in Uttarakhand. But Kamla Devi of Pindari village and Mangola Singh of Nandpur are resisting usury, fraud and gender prejudice to get back their farmland and secure their rights
October 4, 2018 | Puja Awasthi
Their determination outstrips the devastation. Savaged by the August floods, facing a looming drought, the women of Kudumbashree’s pathbreaking group farms are rebuilding, using solidarity as a strategy
September 24, 2018 | P. Sainath
Women who become strong voices in land and forest rights struggles are often most at risk of violence, false charges and imprisonment – as are Lalti Devi and Shoba Bharti, two Dalit activists of UP's Sonbhadra district
July 31, 2018 | Sweta Daga
After investing lakhs, often on loan, mirchi farmers in Andhra encounter cartels of agents at the market yard, who dictate low, loss-inducing prices – and the state’s plans to digitise sales haven’t helped either
July 6, 2018 | Rahul Maganti
Now touching 70 years, she still energetically marches many miles at farmers’ rallies. She was at the Long March two months ago, at a May 3 rally in Dahanu, and is ready to walk to Delhi if her demands are not met
May 14, 2018 | Siddharth Adelkar
Tulshi Bhagat of Murbichapada in Thane works 32 hours 15 times a month to sell leaves, besides doing farm work and house work – and hopes that educating her children will lift them out of this hard labour
May 3, 2018 | Jyoti Shinoli
They are up there amongst the hardest-working farmers anywhere. They’re down there amongst the poorest farmers – Adivasi women, who were at the March 6-12 march from Nashik to Mumbai in large numbers
March 15, 2018 | Shrirang Swarge, Parth M.N.
Many in Marathwada are resisting the proposed Mumbai-Nagpur Samruddhi Highway, which the CM claims will transform the state's economy – while displacing thousands of farmers in nearly 400 villages
October 25, 2017 | Parth M.N.
The farm loan waiver in Maharashtra, ‘the biggest in history’ , is riddled with so many conditions and a ceiling of Rs. 1.5 lakhs, that till the September 22 deadline for waiver applications, over 3 million farmers in distress have been excluded; many are now sinking further into debt, and some have been driven to suicide
September 27, 2017 | Parth M.N.
Chandra Subramanian of Sivagangai district – PARI first wrote about her in 2016 – is a farmer, retailer, mother, who received a ‘homepreneur’ award this week. We learn of her new ‘sampangi’ plants and plans
August 9, 2017 | Aparna Karthikeyan
In this photo essay, Nagi Shiva from Lokkere village presents her concerns and her world on the edge of Bandipur National Park in Karnataka. This is the second in a series of six essays from Bandipur on PARI
July 24, 2017 | Nagi Shiva
In Tamil Nadu's once-fertile Cauvery delta, a long and severe drought has wrecked farming. In many villages, the young have migrated for work and the elderly are doing backbreaking labour to earn some money
July 20, 2017 | Jaideep Hardikar
Jaishinta Banda sits at her porch in Killabandar village, weaving fishing nets. The village borders the 16th century Vasai Fort north of Mumbai city. She is from a family of fish workers, and makes their nets herself. “It takes a month to make one,” she says. While Jaishinta’s husband and two sons go out on a fishing vessel, and her two daughters go to Mumbai for their jobs, she sits knitting the nets after she has finished all her household tasks.
June 1, 2017 | Samyukta Shastri
In villages across Goa, the juice of the cashew apple, a summer fruit, is distilled to produce feni, which now has its own Geographical Indication. At their small family-run distillery in North Goa, Inacina and Luis Fernandes spend four months every year on this laborious task, an art handed down across generations
May 25, 2017 | Sonia Filinto
Jayamma Belliah, an Adivasi from Ananjihundi village in Karnataka, documents her life in a forest with a camera. An outstanding photo essay on PARI to commemorate March 8, International Women's Day
March 8, 2017 | Jayamma Belliah
Adivasis in Chhattisgarh walking to and from forests with firewood – images from a passing encounter
March 1, 2017 | Purusottam Thakur
A wood-gatherer at work in a mountain-top forest in Hmuifang, Mizoram
January 24, 2017 | T. R. Shankar Raman, David C. Vanlalfakawma
For village women in the Sundarbans, collecting tiger prawn seedlings is unrewarding and unsavoury work – though the delicacy fetches high prices for others later along the supply chain
January 11, 2017 | Urvashi Sarkar
Away from the creeping dangers of ‘development’ in Niyamgiri, the Kondhs of Odisha live in a gender equal community, where women are central to all aspects of life – activism, farming, religious ceremonies
December 8, 2016 | Parul Abrol
A Dalit woman brought small yet significant change to Wagholi village of Osmanabad district in Maharashtra – with little gain to herself
November 29, 2016 | Namita Waikar
Tractor loans at 15.9 per cent trapped Aurangabad farmers like Hirabai in debt. But Mercedes Benz loans there were going for 7 per cent at the same time. Yet, sales of both were seen as rural progress
May 13, 2016 | P. Sainath
Women in this Tamil Nadu village would be baffled by Census 2011
March 18, 2016 | Aparna Karthikeyan
Abhuj Maria women in Chhattisgarh walk across difficult terrain for two days to reach the weekly market
March 11, 2016 | Purusottam Thakur
This women’s market is a nerve centre of Imphal, its spirit intact even after the recent earthquake
March 10, 2016 | Anubha Bhonsle, Sunzu Bachaspatimayum
Chandra Subramanian is a single mom, cultivator and retailer in Sivagangai district, Tamil Nadu
March 7, 2016 | Aparna Karthikeyan
Like other women have done for generations in Rajasthan, Chamnibai Meena too has been saving local seeds and preserving indigenous knowledge
October 7, 2015 | Sweta Daga
From the PARI files: Anantapur district has been among the worst-hit by farm suicides in the country, and women who lost their husbands have struggled against huge odds to give a future at least to their children
August 20, 2015 | P. Sainath
Kamlabai Gudhe is a small farmer trying to make a living and support her family. She is also one of about 100,000 women across India who have lost their husbands to farm suicides since the 1990s
August 20, 2015 | P. Sainath
Several women in Karnataka's Mandya district like Jayalakshmamma, whose husband committed suicide four years ago, still stand up to the unending pressure with incredible resilience
August 20, 2015 | P. Sainath
A letter to the president prior to his visit to this district in Vidarbha, the region hardest hit by the agrarian crisis, says, 'We would be highly obliged if you could spare a few minutes to meet the unfortunate widows'
August 6, 2015 | P. Sainath
The adivasi women of Edamalakudi, Kerala’s remotest panchayat, have formed a headload workers’ group and helped light up their villages with solar power
June 20, 2015 | P. Sainath
Today farming brings Ujjwala and Usha together; just a few years ago it was tragedy.
April 28, 2015 | Sukhada Tatke
“Why confiscate the canoes and hurt us in the stomach?"
March 12, 2015 | Urvashi Sarkar
Ujjwala Pethkar is the struggling yet resolute face of Vidarbha's farm widows
March 12, 2015 | Jaideep Hardikar
Ambikapathi and Dhivya are ace swimmers whose time revolves around their work in the village farms
March 11, 2015 | Revathi R.
Gujjari and Sanatan Mohanty talk about the impact of Posco in Dhinkia, Odisha
March 7, 2015 | Purusottam Thakur
In a region of poor yields, a gritty woman farmer succeeds even in years of crop failure. But high costs are depleting Vidarbha’s success stories.
July 21, 2014 | P. Sainath
Farmers resisting India's biggest Foreign Direct Investment deal pay a heavy price for their stance
July 18, 2014 | Chitrangada Choudhury
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