Varsha Torgalkar

Disabled mother-of-two Devanabai Dhaigude has in recent months regularly gone to bed on an empty stomach, after heavy rains flooded the cotton farm where she worked in western India.

She and several other women lost their shifts in July at the farm in Beed, in Maharashtra state - where they removed weeds for 150 rupees ($1.80) a day - after above-average monsoon rains battered the state.