Why would anyone stay in a job where abuse is rampant and women are coerced into hysterectomies? Because the cost of escaping India’s cane fields is often even higher.

Politicians run most of the mills in the state of Maharashtra. They deny or downplay evidence of coerced hysterectomies, debt bondage and child labor in the fields.

Women working on India’s sugarcane farms are having expensive and medically unnecessary hysterectomies so they can work uninterrupted - a practice that keeps sugar flowing to Coke, Pepsi and Cadbury, but leaves its victims with…