Nagpur/Wardha: About an hour’s ride from Maharashtra’s Nagpur city, the geographical centre of India, lies a nondescript village named Jiwnapur. From the outside, it appears like any other village in central India—dry and dusty, with unkempt bushes separating single-storey houses from one another. A tea shop at the centre of the village is where the villagers gather to while away the time. Most are men, both young and middle-aged.
The women are nowhere to be seen during the day. They rise early, finish the housework and board pickup vans to work as farmhands in nearby villages. They pluck chillies and cotton, harvest wheat and chickpeas, or plant paddy saplings, depending on the season. The work is backbreaking but the pay is low—between ？150-200 per day. The men are not interested. They would rather work at construction sites, where the wages are higher—upwards of ？300 per day. But those jobs are hard to come by.
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