Photo of the Day 192

Workers Planting Rice, India, 2003

Photograph by William Albert Allard

Women from India's so-called Untouchable caste plant rice in a large field. Consigned by birth to the lowest social strata, Untouchables number some 160 million, about 15 percent of India's people. Considered impure by Hindu law, they are generally permitted to perform only the most menial jobs.

(Text adapted from and photo shot on assignment for, but not published in, "Untouchable," June 2003, National Geographic magazine)