Inside India's Female Sterilization Camps

Sumati Devi knew before she arrived at the grimy government clinic in northern India that she would be paid to be sterilized. She didn’t know that she would lie on an operating table with bloody sheets, that the scalpel used on her would be stained with rust, or that she was supposed to get counseling on other birth control methods before consenting to have her fallopian tubes cut and tied. The main reason Devi agreed was that the $10 she received—about a week’s wages for a poor family—would help feed her three children. “I did it out of desperation,” says Devi, 25, as she lies on the concrete floor recuperating at the clinic in Bihar state. “We need the money. Health officials came to our home. They told us it would be best.
Source: Bloomberg Business Week
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