India’s womb-less women

Before sunrise in the sugarcane fields of Maharashtra, thousands of women bend, tie, and haul the crop that sweetens millions of lives. Among them are Archara Ashok Chaure, Bhanubai Madhulkar Shinde, and Shailaja Gandhle, names that rarely travel beyond their villages, yet whose bodies carry the cost of a global industry. In this region alone, an estimated 15,000 women have undergone hysterectomies, not as a medical necessity, but as a condition of survival. Their wombs, symbols of life, have been rendered liabilities in a system that punishes absence, even when caused by menstruation, pregnancy, or illness. What forces could make such a decision appear rational? This article explores how exploitative labour systems, entrenched gender norms, fragile healthcare structures, and intensifying climate pressures converge to produce one of the most disturbing manifestations of modern inequality, where the erasure of a body part becomes a tool of survival.

The rural population of India is constituted by 35 million farmers working in the sugarcane industry of the country. Sugarcane has been a driving industry, thrusting India’s economy forward and pushing it to the front of statistics. This highly profitable business is left thoroughly vulnerable to exploitative models and practices. The harvesting of sugarcane is primarily affluent in the rust red, glowy soil of the region of Maharashtra, where the Beed, Sangli, Solapur and Osmanabad districts form the renowned “sugar belt” where hopeful farmers migrate to work as cutters or koyta workers. The harvesting of sugarcane differs from other fields’ harvests as it requires two workers due to the intensity implicit to the cutting, bundling, trimming and transporting of the slender green canes. Due to the need for a symbiotic pair of people to tend to the harvest, married couples are sought out to be the duo to carry out the process. Women and girls as young as 12 are placed in arranged marriages to create a strong pair of sugarcane labourers known as jodi, where men will usually cut the long canes as women sit and tie the bundles. The mukkadams, the local labour contractors, take advantage of the vulnerable nature of the community and deceive rural workers into entering extremely unfair accords, often through informal rather than formal agreements. The jodis receive around 150,000 rupees, which amounts to 1400€, for four months, which is the length of a harvesting season from December to March, resulting in this amount having to support the couple and possibly support children. The predatory arrangements jodis find themselves tangled in subject them to grand deductions for missed work and lack any safeguard or guarantee for them, creating an uneasy concern over taking any leave.

Due to this system, where leave is equivalent to missed food, women are faced with a ruthless reasoning, as menstruation and pregnancy become the primary liabilities keeping them from obtaining basic provisions for survival. The dire conditions that women are subjected to consist of poor sanitation due to cramped living conditions and dangerous heat that leads to menstruation feeling heavier and more painful. This twisted occurrence poses women in front of a primordial decision, losing pay and food or a medical fix. In a context where tales still dictate stereotypes, menstruating women are considered to be impure, creating a further incentive to have an operation to remove one’s uterus. “Releasing them of their monthly problems” is the narrative cast upon women to compel them into working longer and longer hours. In 2019, Beed district had a ramping number of hysterectomies, resulting in almost 5000 procedures, as claimed by legislator Neelam Gorhe and Maharashtra Health Minister Eknath Shinde. Further research indicates that more than 13,000 women in the area had their womb removed in the past 10 years. These operations are often encouraged and covered by loans given by the mukkadams, who know of the downsides menstruation brings to their business. The gynaecologists of the area, often having close business relations with the mukkadams, are heavily incentivised to perform the operation, often dismissing and neglecting to wholly brief the patient on the risks associated with hysterectomies. Hot flushes, anxiety, depression, fatigue, incontinence, masculinisation, insomnia, osteoporosis. These are a few of the possible consequences of such an intrusive and delicate procedure. The community often lacks a vigilant culture, which translates into a lack of a common collective voice in advocating for the dangers of this operation and the fraudulent loans.

A relevant lens through which this phenomenon is further exacerbated and deemed relevant is the environmental impact. As our societies and states become further interdependent and demanding, the need for sugar rises. This exacerbated demand for the material, coupled with the troubling consequences of climate change on the area, leads to working conditions being more extreme, creating an environment where hostile working conditions can proliferate and worsen. The harvest becomes more difficult and demanding as a consequence of the rise in temperatures, which in an area as prone to droughts as Maharashtra means difficult and reduced productivity of sugarcane. This creates an optimal storm for exploitative practices to arise, as sugarcane production diminishes and work becomes more strenuous and demanding. Hysterectomies are therefore not simply a consequence of labour, but a symptom of climate pressure. This understanding reframes the notion of the consequences of climate change, delving into a holistic understanding which portrays the ways in which climate change alters not only landscapes, but lives and bodies. Hysterectomies become a tool for survival in a fragile community plastered by exploitation and susceptible to environmental disasters.

India, next to Brazil, has been one of the most pivotal and largest sugar producers. A major sum of the amount produced is used domestically, but around 4 million tons per year is shipped off to the United States, creating a high demand for major companies. This capitalist component exacerbates existing imbalances, as capitalism has always attempted to restrict reproductive labour to diminish labour costs. This occurs as capitalism survives and flourishes on the externalisation of care work, by pushing caregiving activities outside of the realm. Furthermore, within rural communities, the lack of ownership of land by women removes bargaining power in labour markets, making decisions such as the permanent removal of the uterus rational and functional decisions. This mechanism and culture are the consequence of the accelerated economy India has been pursuing since its liberalisation in 2014, which repurposed agricultural frameworks, privatised healthcare and increased production time to keep up with the advanced tempo of global supply chains. Liberalisation led to private investments being prioritised and regulations being dismissed, creating an export-oriented economy that pushes for scale and supply, reframing agriculture solely for capital. Sugarcane, being a high-demand produce, became a corporate crop. This framework undermined the importance of implementing sustainable agriculture, bettering healthcare in rural communities, promoting employment protection and common collectivism. In this realm, life-changing surgical procedures became a plausible solution to create a reliable worker, or even better, they become rewarded as they provide uninterrupted labour, perfectly fitting capitalist frameworks. The removal of a body part becomes yet another efficiency tool employed to oil the machine of productivity, rendering the human body, the organ of life, a burden.

This holistic assessment of the extent to which labour practices alter lives reframes the common understanding of poverty. Poverty is not simply events, such as death, famines, or natural disasters, but the very processes, the sum of factors such as the ones described in this report. The individual, marital, economic and environmental factors that influence a woman to undergo a hysterectomy are an example of the extent to which exploitation and poverty go. Land, health, education, literacy, mortality rates, debt, assets, irrigation, water, sanitation and jobs thoroughly converge in this tragic story. To create change, continuous and further accountability measures should be undertaken. This implies further documentation and reporting both on the individual stories, but also on the institutional chain that permeates exploitative practices. Societal force can play a pivotal role in dismantling these malevolent practices, creating leverage to produce change.

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