As Indian women leave jobs, single women keep working. Here's why

Currently, India has the largest number of single women in its history

For as long as she can remember, Kolkata-based Ruchhita Kazaria, 36 and never married, has known she would have to get a job. Two of her elder sisters started working right after school: “My father was clear that if we wanted to study beyond school, we would have to pay for it,” said Kazaria. “It’s not that he couldn’t afford it, but he said that as girls we had to learn to be financially independent.”

And so, at 18, Kazaria found herself working for a newspaper on a salary of Rs 3,500 a month, enough to pay