without uterus to produce more sugar

by Ilaria Vallerini

A white canvas dotted with colored splinters. This is the photograph from the top of the fields of Indian district of Beed. who brave women in saristraditional indian dress, they work tirelessly in the sugar cane plantations last the harvest time (six months a year). Theirs calvary but it also has another name: hysterectomy. Il 36% of female workersindeed, she underwent an ablation of the uterus. This makes it easier for them to find work because it makes them more productive. A fundamental prerequisite for Indiail main country producing and exporter of sugar in the world. To highlight this terrible fate is the reportage “The sugar sacrifices”Broadcast by the broadcaster France Television and aired at ‘Correspondent‘.

An ordeal called a hysterectomy

Beyond a million of workers, of which the half are womenat the beginning of October they travel to city ​​Beed to find use in the cultivation of sugar cane. Generally women are recruited from ‘mukadam’or agents paid by plantation owners to bring entire families to work in the fields, already from the age of ten. The working conditions are extremely harsh: wake up at 3 am, plus 10 hours in the fields folded under the sun e only one day of rest per month. During the six months of the harvest they live in tents installed by the owners of the sugar factories, without running water or electricity. In the fields it is always the notorious ‘mukadam’ who control agricultural workers and their productivity. They are always the ones who suggest to the girls and women to proceed to a total hysterectomywith ablation of the ovaries, to eliminate menstrual pain, problems related to childbirth, presenting the intervention as trivial. Doctors in the region who perform the invasive operation argue that by doing so they avoid developing cancer, which is actually a much lower risk for women’s health with respect to the consequences of a hysterectomy, especially if performed in young age. “If they don’t remove the uterus, that’s a problem for us, they’re less productive. And if they have cancer, they are no longer of any use, ”he reports ‘Correspondent’ the recruiter Jyotiram Andhale specifying that the cost of the intervention is their responsibility and that during hospitalization and convalescence they are not paid.

Uterus removed even in 20-year-old girls

There are those who have suffered the removal of the uterus just 20 years. A massacre, which makes the female body an empty shell. Taking away what makes women is the most ignoble of gestures. Hysterectomy causes a very early menopause in that blocks the production of hormones e makes women sterile. So at 30 they look 50, because the body tends to wither prematurely. On the other hand, no more menstrual pains, no children, and above all greater productivity (which only does the good of the landowners) and a guaranteed job. They often have no other choice if not to give in to the pressures of the ‘mukadam’ to work and succeed keep the wolf from the door with the family, paying the highest price on their own skin. A long ordealtherefore, which starts right from the operation and unfolds in the most varied daily abuses. “Il mukadam screams at us if we don’t work hard enough. She beats us very hard, even when we are sick. Shout out to our husbands that we don’t work hard and that we have to pay back the salary “, tells a woman to the journalists of France Television, while her husband is busy delivering the freshly cut reeds to the factory which will then be processed, ready for export all over the world. The sacrifice of women enclosed in a sachet of sugar.