Millions of women have gone from being land owners and cultivators to becoming labourers over a decade. Slight and dark, Shyampati, 30, leaned against a house made fragile from unseasonal rain, and talked animatedly about life as a farmer, labourer, goat-herder, mother of four, main wage-earner and full-time housewife. Here in her rain-washed, poor village in western Uttar Pradesh?s Chitrakoot district?and across the northern plains and southern plateau?Shyampati (she uses only one name) represents a hidden Indian demographic: the Indian women farmer, almost never publicly acknowledged, reviled by superstition and patriarchy, and increasingly troubled.

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