n Punjab's cotton-belt (North India), crop failure and debts are pushing an increasing number of farmers to suicide. But now their widows are assuming positions of leadership and raising their voice to fight an unjust system. Being a single woman in rural India is not easy. Veerpal, 43, had to learn it the hard way: first her father died by suicide in the late 90’s, then the same happened to her husband, just 4 years after their wedding. Before, he had himself lost his father to suicide. Veerpal had to find a way to make a living and support her kids, while facing the stigma that comes with suicide, and harassment that women not attached to a man are subjected to in villages. In her village, Ralla, with a population of 6,000 in the district of Mansa, she personally knows at least 250 women who lost a relative to suicide. All of them were farmers or agriculture laborers, crushed by debts. A study by the Punjab Agricultural University found that in the last 20 years at least 16,600 farmers and laborers died by suicide, in just 6 districts of Punjab. In a district like Mansa, the news of a suicide is almost a daily occurance in the local newspaper. The village of Ralla is surrounded by the fields: wheat, rice, and cotton. But the great euphoria of the green revolution that made Punjab the breadbasket of India in the ‘70s, got over a long time ago. Sukjeet, Veerpal’s neighbor, had lost her husband: “People around me told me I would bring shame to my family if I went out alone, to protest. But luckily my daughter encouraged me. If you stay at home, you think you are the only one, but as I stepped outside I realized we are many''. And they are fighting to make a change. Their next goal is granting education to the next generation of women, like Veerpal’s daughter, Diljot, who is studying to become a lawyer to defend labor rights