Mahua Pahari, Jharkhand, India: A villager uses a shawl to protect her from the summer heat while she works in the mine. In Koderma the majority of people are landless peasants. During the rainy season, the only way for them to survive is to work as daily laborers in farms or to take up loans from the agents and repay them when the mining season starts again. Given their meagre earnings, most of the miners become de-facto bonded laborers unable to end their cycle of indebtedness, which is often passed from father to son.