India’s Economy Is Leaving a Generation of Women behind on the Farm

The Washington Post

20:00 JST, March 3, 2025

PARSAUNI, India – This country’s rapid rise was supposed to uplift the rural poor. Instead, economic stagnation is pulling men and women in opposite directions.

On paper, the Indian economy shines, but opportunities are shrinking for families on the margins. Increasingly, men are leaving their homes in rural areas, chasing meager wages in distant cities, while their wives are left behind to farm – a quietly profound transformation that economists say is straining households and contributing to a lost decade for millions of people.

“There is a new level of alienation, loneliness and desperation,” said Jayati Ghosh, an economist at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst.

Nearly half of India’s population works in agriculture. The figure declined steadily starting in the mid-1990s but crept up again during the pandemic – and has held steady in the years since as, more and more, farm work becomes women’s work.

Geetanjali Devi, 27, holds a bachelor’s degree in history but now spends her days managing crop diseases and fertilizers on her family’s farm in the state of Bihar, in a remote hamlet near the border with Nepal. Her husband, like the majority of men in her village, spends most of the year working construction in the southern state of Kerala, earning $8 a day more than 1,000 miles away.

“We figure out some way to do it without the men,” Geetanjali said.

Beside her, her sister-in-law Karishma Devi nodded. Their husbands are brothers. “We have to try to not think about missing them,” Karishma said. “If we don’t let them leave, how will we earn?”

This growing cleavage between couples underscores India’s deeper challenge.

“We need a policy so that people can exit agriculture into good jobs,” said Amrita Datta, a professor at the Indian Institute of Technology in Hyderabad. Unfortunately, she added, “we are stuck.”

‘Wasting our time’

The roads leading to Parsauni are newly paved, part of a massive government effort to improve rural infrastructure. But beyond the smoke curling from small brick kilns, there were no signs of industry for miles on end.

Economists say microenterprises like jam processing or cloth manufacturing – once the backbone of rural employment – are vanishing, leaving few options but subsistence agriculture.

“We will grow so old just stuck on this farm,” Geetanjali lamented, as she walked with Karishma in the sugar cane fields behind their home. “We are just waiting here, wasting our time.”

Karishma said she barely ate after her husband first left for Kerala in 2022, and her two sons cried and cried. When she fell ill, she recalled, she had to track down a male neighbor with a motorcycle to get her medicine.

“We have to find some man to do everything,” she said.

Daily phone calls bring little solace. Karishma had spoken briefly with her husband that morning, but with several other men living in his hostel room, the conversation felt impersonal.

“If we were together, we would share everything,” she said.

Karishma and Geetanjali looked on as several other women rhythmically peeled brown and green leaves off the stalks of sugar cane. They wore the collared shirts of their husbands – who were also in Kerala – over their saris.

“We gain courage watching others,” Karishma said.

After peeling the crop, the women will hire men to load the sugar cane onto trucks and take it to the mills – work their husbands used to do.

Jobless growth

For decades, the share of India’s workforce employed in agriculture had been shrinking – falling from nearly 65 percent in 1994 to 44 percent in 2018. The trend began to reverse in 2019 and accelerated as the coronavirus pandemic shut down urban factories and construction sites, and millions of migrant workers returned to their home villages.

Though India’s economy has bounced back since the pandemic, employment has not kept pace. Economists call it “jobless growth.” As a result, the share of Indians working in agriculture is still above pre-pandemic levels, and the gender gap is widening.

Two-thirds of women working in India labor on farms, compared to just one-third of men, according to the latest government figures. Many of them, like Geetanjali, were the first in their family to go to college, part of what economist Santosh Mehrotra called a “revolution of rising expectations.”

They “want to work but there are no jobs,” Mehrotra said. “They are in agriculture because they are at home.”

Their husbands who migrate to cities are often unable to find salaried jobs, researchers say, and are instead trapped in the informal sector, working as construction workers or street vendors. They earn more than they did in the fields at home, but not enough to give up their farms and bring their families with them.

Manufacturing, long seen as a key pathway to economic mobility, shrank for the first time in independent India’s history in 2017, Mehrotra said, and has never fully rebounded.

The consequences are stark: Indians are now poorer than Hondurans on a per capita basis. More than half of those of working age are unable to find a place in the formal economy.

The government’s primary response so far has been cash handouts and other welfare initiatives, which experts say do little to address the structural problems.

Beyond the village

In Parsauni, the electricity was out again. The family sat in the dark around a crackling fire. Geetanjali’s husband, Rambali Kumar, had returned after a year of being away, bearing chocolates and conch bangles.

His 4-year-old son, Ashish, clung to him, eyes fixed on YouTube videos.

Karishma sighed. “Meena has it the best,” she said, referring to their third sister-in-law, who moved with her husband to Delhi and now works as a cook and a cleaner in middle-class homes. Meena sends photos of famous landmarks, like Red Fort and India Gate, offering glimpses of life beyond the village.

“She says we don’t realize how difficult it is in the city,” said Geetanjali, but “at least they are together. They can share their happiness and sorrows.”

The next day, Rambali loaded bundles of sugar cane onto trucks, earning $3 for each load. He smiled as he worked, recalling the strange English phrase his wife now uses at the end of phone calls.

“She says ‘I love you’ to me on the phone,” he said, casting his eyes downward. “I’ve started saying it back. I was always the shy one.”

Even as he joked, his mind was elsewhere – on Kerala, where he would soon have to return for better pay. Today’s wages would cover their food, nothing more, but it was still their most stable source of income.

His construction jobs pay by the week. When the work runs out, he wrestles with whether to stick it out, or return to help his family on the farm.

Rambali never finished high school and is now trying to save up for his son’s education. “It’s expensive, but I will keep working,” he said. “I just don’t want him to be a farmer.”

Back at their home, Karishma and Geetanjali were in higher spirits. Their children played with sugar cane and old tires, weaving between the banana trees that flanked their brick house.

“Our husbands aren’t good-looking,” Geetanjali joked, “but their heart is pure. They never drink, never fight.”

Still, their lives together – and the prolonged separations – are never easy. Geetanjali smirked while pushing the hand pump for water, teasing her sister-in-law. “You should see Karishma when her husband comes home. As soon as he steps on the train from Kerala, she becomes the happiest in the village.”

“And what about you? You and your kids start screaming with joy!” Karishma shot back as she swept the courtyard.

“Below our laughs, we are still sad,” said Geetanjali, wiping her hands. “We are neither here nor there.”