Pahadin
Lakshmi Gauniyal's day starts at dawn and she rests only after dusk. She does all the work, from preparing meals to cutting wood from trees to sowing seeds in their agricultural field and earning money from labour under the government's social security measure MNREGA. Had it not been for women like Lakshmi, families would have been compelled to migrate away from their villages in Uttarakhand state's mountainous Pauri Garhwal district. The self-reliant village economy, of which women are the backbone, is what is preventing mass migration in this district.
