While the hysterectomy rate is 2/1000 in the West, it reaches 17/1000 in India, and especially up to 350/1000 in the western state of Maharashtra, the "Sugar Belt". The world's leading sugar producer, India has about 1.5 million Indians who gather in the sugar cane fields after the monsoon. Half of them are women from the lowest castes of Indian society.
These women, who have already given birth to several children and for whom menstruation is a burden, are easily convinced of the necessity of the surgery, without knowing the risks it poses to their health and without understanding that these medical procedures are absolutely unnecessary. No days off, no social coverage, much less convalescence: after an expensive procedure entirely at their own expense - between 250 and 500 euros - these farm workers return, mutilated, to the sugar cane fields to pay off their debt, at the mercy of sugar barons greed.