India, July 5 -- When Usha Kute's husband, a debt-ridden farmer, died by suicide in 2016, she inherited not just his half-acre farm in Maharashtra's Yavatmal district but a battle. She had to fight her father-in-law for the land, which had no electricity or water. Years later, after getting a well dug, she finally had a bumper cotton harvest but had to sell at low rates to pay for her son's tuition. Today, finally, the once debt- ridden land is a source of livelihood, dignity and independence.

The happy ending to Usha's story is unusual. The rest of it would be painfully familiar to millions of women farmers for whom "survival is a daily act of navigating risk, debt, and indignity," finds a 2025 study by Mahila Kisan Adhikar Manch (MAKAA...