In Beed, Drought Ends in the Operating Theatre
When the rains stopped coming to Beed, it wasn’t only the crops that failed. Women’s bodies began to fail first. Beed, a drought-hit district in Maharashtra’s Marathwada region, has become known for something no place should ever be known for: an unusually high number of women without wombs. Not because of cancer. Not because of medical emergencies. It is because survival, under the cross-section of climate stress and labour exploitation, has made the uterus expendable. For years, recurring droughts have devastated agriculture in Beed. Rainfall deficits, falling groundwater levels, crop failure and rising debt have pushed families to the edge. With few local employment options, entire households migrate seasonally to sugarcane-growing regions of western Maharashtra, Karnataka, Telangana, and Andhra Pradesh. Sugarcane cutting is among the most physically punishing forms of agricultural labour. Workers routinely put in 12 to 18 hours a day. They cut, bundle, lift, and load cane wei...