Abstract
In the summer of 1999, I returned to one of the villages in the Telengana region of Andhra Pradesh state in South India where I have done fieldwork off and on for the last 15 years.1 I went to see Jamulamma and her husband, Sanjanna, who live in the Madi-gere, the caste-segregated locality of the village where they and other low-caste Madigas live.2 Jamulamma's household owns no land and she earns a living of about 20 rupees (US$.50) a day as a field laborer. It was to her that I asked a question that had begun to puzzle me, Why is it that the area under cotton [in Jamulamma's village] has gone up and more women and children are working in the cotton fields, but fewer of them are wearing cotton saris?
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