Drought-stricken Beed: Land of parched fields and broken promises

The cotton plants are green, but the bolls are missing. Across the Chauhan family’s four-acre field in Majalgaon in Maharashtra’s Beed district, the plants stand stunted, their promise of a harvest withered by the absence of rain. What should have been a season of cotton picking has become a search for the few bolls the drought has spared.

Under the relentless October sun, Vanita Chauhan bends over the plants, picking the little cotton she can find. A tattered towel covers her head, shielding her from the scorching heat. Her full-sleeved shirt is buttoned up to her neck, while the red pallu of her sari is tied around her arm and neck, fashioned into an improvised pouch.

She drops each cotton boll into it before moving hurriedly to the next plant.