Annie Banerji

Hobbling out of a tuk-tuk, Pooja Gupta joined fellow community health workers as they punched their fists in the air and chanted slogans against authorities in India who, they say, pay poorly despite giving them more and more work to do.

Like Gupta, tens of thousands of female health workers across South Asia are demanding basic rights and social protections that are currently denied to them such as the minimum wage, sick leave, maternity benefits and pensions.

A new law reserving 33% of seats for women in India's parliament will likely lead to more female-friendly policies on jobs, health and education, lawmakers and campaigners said, pointing to village councils which have had the quota for 30 years.

Lawmakers in India's upper house of parliament on Thursday passed the landmark bill a day after it was approved by the lower house. Six attempts to clear the bill had failed since it was first introduced in 1996.

Pinky Negi, an Indian teacher with two master's degrees, loved her old job at a public school in the Himalayan foothills. But then she did what millions of Indian women do every year - gave up her career when she got married and had children.

"The idea of not earning pinches me the most when I have to ask for the smallest of things," said Negi, who briefly tried home tutoring before the birth of her second child led her to give up work altogether.

Cooped up at home, Pari Sediqi spends her days worrying how she will feed her sick husband and six children now that women are banned from carrying out aid work in Afghanistan.

Add to that Kabul's coldest winter in more than a decade, making warm clothes, fuel and food all the more crucial, and Sediqi is out of ideas about how to keep the family going.

Rakesh Kumar was playing with his daughter at a park in northern India one evening in September when two smartly dressed salesmen approached the carpenter and father-of-three.

The men said they worked for Byju's, an Indian education technology company that offers online classes, and pitched a 36,000-rupee ($435) tuition course for Kumar's 11-year-old daughter, saying it would be her golden ticket to success.

From parents wanting the best possible education for their children to next-generation tech-savvy professionals striving to build their careers, education technology company Bjyu's quickly became a beacon of hope for Indians seeking a brighter future.

Founded in 2011, the Bengaluru-based startup launched its learning app in 2015 and soon snowballed into a multibillion-dollar behemoth - and India's leading edtech business - with members of the country's burgeoning middle class seeking jobs and financial security in one of the world's biggest tech hubs.

Pulling out a shirt from a shelf at her shop in central India, Chandrawati Rajpoot recalls the sleepless nights she had after borrowing money from a loan shark - twice to pay for her sons' college tuition and once for a medical emergency.

Unable to pay the 5% daily interest on her last loan of 20,000 rupees ($245) in 2019, she was forced to give away her gold bangles - a family heirloom - to stop the moneylender from harassing her.

Weak and traumatised after two miscarriages and weeks of painful bleeding, Ritu decided to stop trying for a son, in defiance of her traditional Indian family who wanted a male heir.

Instead, the 32-year-old housewife - who was married at the age of 19 to a man chosen by her parents - decided to educate their four daughters to become "as capable as a son".

Catching his breath after a set of push-ups, Indian teenager Neeraj Kumar said waking before dawn for a gruelling military-style training session had become part of his routine - even as his dreams of an army career turn to dust.

Joining the military has long been seen as a route out of poverty in India, but a recruitment shakeup that aims to hire young troops on capped four-year contracts with less favourable terms has angered would-be recruits like Kumar - sparking mass protests in June.

As the scorching sun beat down on his fruit cart, Mohammad Ikrar dreaded another day of tossing out dozens of rotting mangoes and melons - a regular practice as India grappled with an unprecedented heatwave this month.

The 38-year-old does not own a refrigerator, meaning his fruit quickly spoils. By the end of the day, any leftover produce is usually only good to be fed to passing stray cows.