The Indian prime minister’s rhetoric strayed a long way from reality.
An Indian woman sorts reusable items from a landfill on the outskirts of New Delhi in March 2021. Trash pickers sometimes toil alongside paid municipal sanitation workers and provide a vital service to cities. Their subsistence work is put at risk by smart city technologies.
(AP Photo/Altaf Qadri)
‘Smart’ solutions to urban solid waste are creating serious challenges for low-income women waste workers in India.
Planting paddy saplings in Patiala, India. Three-quarters of Indian farmers are women, but most don’t own their land.
Bharat Bhushan/Hindustan Times via Getty Images
Most Indian farmers are women. But few own their land, and gender inequality limits their access to markets. These issues won’t be fixed by recent agricultural reforms; in fact, they may get worse.
Three women sorting out garbage in Dharavi, India, in 2013.
Frank Bienewald / Alamy Stock Photo