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what working in the sugar-cane industry means for Indian women

Sugar cane farming in Karnataka
Sugar cane farming in Karnataka

On this edition of Your Call’s One Planet Series, we discuss a New York Times / Fuller Project investigation about human rights abuses in India's Sugar Industry.

The investigation reveales that household-name companies and Indian politicians profit off a brutal system that forces children to work, pushes them into underage marriages and coerces women to get unnecessary hysterectomies to keep them working in the fields, unencumbered by menstruation or routine ailments.

The NY Times investigative journalist Megha Rajagopalan writes that local politicians and sugar barons say that laborers are free to leave. The work is hard, they concede, but laborers can always seek work elsewhere. But the sugar workers of Maharashtra are far from free. With no written contracts, they are at the mercy of their employers to decide when they may leave. They frequently work under the threat of violence, abduction and murder

Guest:

Megha Rajagopalan, Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative correspondent for the New York Times

Resources:
The NY Times: To Quit Their Jobs, Sugar Workers Risk Kidnapping, Assault and Murder

Malihe Razazan is the senior producer of KALW's daily call-in program, Your Call.