In Maharashtra’s Beed district, the cutting season doesn’t just extract sugarcane—it extracts wombs. A recent health department report, released after routine screenings of migrant women sugarcane workers ahead of the 2024–25 Diwali migration, has confirmed what activists and locals have long known but the state has persistently downplayed: 843 women, many of them in their early thirties, underwent hysterectomies—surgical removal of the uterus—before departing for work in the fields.
Among them, 477 were between 30 and 35 years old. That is not just a data point—it is a collective scream from a generation of women who are being systematically stripped of their reproductive rights in exchange for subsistence wages and survival.
A Labour Model Built on Menstrual Erasure
The sugarcane economy in Maharashtra, especially in drought-prone districts like Beed, thrives on the backs of seasonal migrant workers—primarily from marginalised castes and impoverished households. But for women workers, the burden doesn’t end with daily wage labour. They are often expected to work alongside their husbands as bonded pairs (“jodis”), harvesting cane from dawn to dusk, with few breaks, no maternity leave, and no tolerance for menstruation-related health complications.
The reality is chillingly simple: if a woman menstruates, takes a day off due to cramps or bleeding, or becomes pregnant, she risks fines, pay cuts, or loss of contract. The solution offered? Surgical removal of her uterus.
Private Clinics and the Business of Consent
The state report shows that 279 of the hysterectomies were conducted at private clinics—with the “requisite approval” of government doctors. Yet, consent in these cases is a slippery word. Multiple testimonies from rights organisations and independent journalists suggest that women are routinely misled into believing that hysterectomy is the only way to alleviate common reproductive health issues—ranging from mild infections to irregular periods. Others are told it will make them “stronger” and more “work efficient.” Often, the procedure is linked to loans from labour contractors, locking women into a cycle of debt bondage.
What makes this pattern even more egregious is that Maharashtra’s health ministry has already acknowledged a history of abuse: In 2019, a committee report stated that over 13,500 hysterectomies were performed in Beed district in the last 15 years, many of which were flagged as medically unnecessary.
Whose Womb? Whose Choice?
hat’s playing out in Beed is not just a regional scandal—it is a political failure of the Indian state. These surgeries are not isolated incidents. They reflect the structural violence embedded in our economic model—where the productivity of a woman’s body is prioritised over her ersonhood. Despite procedural guidelines introduced in 2019 requiring a medical board’s clearance for non-emergency hysterectomies, enforcement has been weak. Clinics remain largely unregulated, oversight is sporadic, and vigilance committees—modeled after PCPNDT authorities—remain toothless in most districts.
Health officials in Beed have attempted damage control by claiming that only 63 surgeries were conducted among sugarcane workers in 2024—of which just eight were in government hospitals. But these figures appear to conveniently ignore the parallel data collected through worker screenings before migration, which recorded 843 surgeries.
Early Menopause, Lifelong Fallout
Women in their early thirties are not just being rendered infertile—they are being condemned to early menopause, with all its cascading health implications: increased risk of osteoporosis, cardiovascular disease, hormonal imbalances, mental health deterioration, and urinary incontinence. Worse still, hysterectomy is not always the solution” it is sold as. Recent screenings have found over 1,500 pregnant women working in the fields this season, and more than 3,400 women diagnosed with severe anemia—a direct result of poor nutrition, blood loss, and post surgical neglect.
These women are made to feed an economy that cannot afford their fertility. They bleed into the soil to sweeten the nation’s tea cups. And in return, they are forced to make the ultimate trade: their wombs for wages.
The State’s Measured Response—And Its Limits
Faced with public outrage, the Maharashtra government has announced the formation of district-level vigilance committees to audit hysterectomy cases, especially in private hospitals. It has also launched flying squads for surprise inspections and is considering action under nursing and clinic regulations. But these steps fall short of grappling with the root causes: lack of menstrual leave, coercive labour contracts, and a health system that prioritises efficiency over ethics. NGOs and labour groups have rightly termed this a reproductive genocide—a mass erasure of bodily autonomy driven by caste, class, and gender hierarchies.
As one activist in Beed put it bluntly: “These women are not patients. They are just labouring bodies to be managed.”
Rewriting the Script
The Beed crisis cannot be solved by audits alone. What’s needed is a complete reimagining of labour protections—starting with legislated menstrual leave, universal health screenings before contracts are signed, free reproductive healthcare, and above all, recognition that menstruation and motherhood are not pathologies to be cut out for productivity’s sake.
If the state wants to protect its workers, it must first stop mutilating them into compliance. In the end, this is not a medical story. It is not about numbers or percentages. It is about the lives of hundreds of young women who were forced to choose between their futures and their wages. Their silence is not consent. It is the sound of an economy built on organs no longer there.
