Nandu Sol calls himself a sugarcane farmer, but in the past three years, he hasn’t harvested a single stalk of cane on his five-acre farm in the heart of Solapur in Western Maharashtra.
“I grow wheat, jowar and maize these days, but the real money used to be in sugarcane,” said Sol, a 60-year-old farmer in Yawali, a village 40 kms from Solapur city.
With a population of around 7,000 people, Yawali is nondescript but not small, and like every other village in Solapur, it is currently caught up in the frenzy of the Maharashtra assembly election due on October 15. One recent day, most villagers were wearing caps and scarves emblazoned with the Nationalist Congress Party’s clock symbol and were attending a rally in the gram panchayat courtyard. But a few men – including Sol – sipped tea across the road, aloof from all the action.
Sol claims he was forced to abandon sugarcane, a water-intensive crop, because of poor rainfall and drought-like conditions in the district in the past few years. “Right now we get barely enough water to drink, but if the rain improves – or if I get access to irrigation like some others in the village – I will go back to growing sugarcane, because it's the only way to make money,” he said.
Who are these other villagers with better access to irrigation? Sol casually points towards the panchayat courtyard, where the NCP rally has just concluded, and says no more about it.
Sugar bowl in a drought zone
The Ujjani dam – a massive, 185-ft dam built on the Bhima river in Solapur 34 years ago – is the largest in the region.
In the past 15 years, with water from the dam being diverted to its tributary, river Sina, irrigation has been accessible to a wider network of farmers even in southern Solapur. This has given a boost to the cultivation of sugarcane – a very water-intensive crop – and to sugar factories in a district that is largely considered drought-prone. Sugarcane has become the most ubiquitous crop across the region.
“Solapur is now the biggest producer of sugar in Maharashtra with scope to develop many more factories,” said RV Dani, head of the sugar technology department at the Vasantdada Sugar Institute, a research-based institution in Pune.
Whenever the Ujjani dam is full, sugarcane productivity shoots up for at least two years in Solapur. Today, Solapur district has at least 30 medium and large sugar factories, of which less than half are co-owned by farmers’ cooperatives. They are dominated by politicians belonging to the Congress and the NCP. In 2011-'12, before the drought year, Solapur had contributed 18.6% of Maharashtra’s sugar production, the highest among all districts.
The fruits of this abundance, however, have not been shared uniformly among sugarcane farmers.
Not for all
Ranganath Gurav, Sol’s neighbour from Yawali, is facing a debt of Rs 14 lakh after he took a State Bank of India loan four years ago to irrigate six acres of his farm. “The local NCP MLA helps other farmers get canal water from the Ujjani, but I had to take this loan to get water through a pipe from 6 kms away,” said Gurav, who estimates it will take around five or six more years to pay off his loan if he produces at least 350 tonnes of sugarcane a year.
Like Sol, Gurav is a BJP supporter and believes things would improve for him if the saffron party came to power in Maharashtra. “Modi is a great man, but the NCP and Congress have a very strong influence over people here,” he said.
The influence of the political parties is evident during election season, when most work in the fields and factories comes to a standstill and political campaigns take up more time. Sugar factories run for around 180 days a year in two seasons, and as they wait for this winter’s cane crushing season to begin after Diwali, factory workers are busy riding bikes and vans from village to village, campaigning for their employers.
“People won’t tell you this openly, but sugar factory owners often threaten not to buy cane from farmers if they don’t vote for their party,” said Amol Patil, 33, a farmer from Kasigaon in southern Solapur.
Even though they are hesitant to talk about political pressure, most farmers across villages have the same story to tell about the way their cane is measured and bought by factories, irrespective of their political affiliations.
“The factories pay us the proper fixed rate – around Rs 1,800 to Rs 2,200 per tonne – for our cane, and sometimes even pay more if they have profits,” said Arjun Dharmapatil, a Kasigaon farmer. “But instead of buying fresh cane right after it is cut, factories often let it lie with us for months, so that they water content reduces and they get more sugar per tonne for the same rate.”
While last year’s drought has made many farmers conscious of the unreliability of relying on sugarcane and sugar factories, they believe government policies don’t leave them many other options. The central government issues a fixed rate – known as the Fair and Remunerative Price – for sugarcane, to ensure that farmers don’t get short-changed by factory owners.
“But there are no fixed rates for other crops we can grow, such as jowar or maize,” said Sol. “The prices for those crops are controlled by middlemen, and they bring us barely enough money to eat three meals a day.”
Lack of incentives
With a lack of incentives in other sectors, and more sugar factories coming up, farmers in Solapur have resigned themselves to the fact that sugarcane is here to stay.
Dilip Dhotre, a Maharashtra Navnirman Sena candidate from Pandharpur constituency and the MNS district president in Solapur, has a simpler explanation for the lure of expanding the sugar industry. “Even if you don’t directly make sugar, you can make a lot of money in this industry,” he said.
By the end of this year, Dhotre is going to start a small factory of his own, called Manase Agro Industries Ltd. Named after Raj Thackeray’s party, the factory will stop short of making processed sugar and make jaggery powder instead. “It is organic, can be used to make at least 42 different agro-based or medical products, and the factory needs fewer approvals to set up,” said Dhotre. “And like the sugar factories, it can yield profits of at least Rs 250 crore a year. So why will we not want to promote the sugar industry?”
“I grow wheat, jowar and maize these days, but the real money used to be in sugarcane,” said Sol, a 60-year-old farmer in Yawali, a village 40 kms from Solapur city.
With a population of around 7,000 people, Yawali is nondescript but not small, and like every other village in Solapur, it is currently caught up in the frenzy of the Maharashtra assembly election due on October 15. One recent day, most villagers were wearing caps and scarves emblazoned with the Nationalist Congress Party’s clock symbol and were attending a rally in the gram panchayat courtyard. But a few men – including Sol – sipped tea across the road, aloof from all the action.
“We are BJP supporters,” they say. Before they stopped growing sugarcane, they would sell their harvests largely to Solapur’s Lokmangal sugar factory, owned by local Bharatiya Janata Party leader and former MP Subhash Deshmukh.
Sol claims he was forced to abandon sugarcane, a water-intensive crop, because of poor rainfall and drought-like conditions in the district in the past few years. “Right now we get barely enough water to drink, but if the rain improves – or if I get access to irrigation like some others in the village – I will go back to growing sugarcane, because it's the only way to make money,” he said.
Who are these other villagers with better access to irrigation? Sol casually points towards the panchayat courtyard, where the NCP rally has just concluded, and says no more about it.
The men sauntering out from the afternoon rally are quite nonchalant about their success as sugarcane farmers. “We have been growing less cane than before because of poor rainfall, but our farms get water from canals connected to Ujjani dam,” said Appa Pawar, a middle-aged farmer with eight acres of farmland. Pawar and his neighbours sell their cane to Loknete Baburao Patil Agro Industries, a sugar factory named after its founder, an NCP leader. “We have always been NCP supporters," said Pawar. "It has been in power here for a long time, and the Loknete factory gives us a good price for our cane.”
Sugar bowl in a drought zone
The Ujjani dam – a massive, 185-ft dam built on the Bhima river in Solapur 34 years ago – is the largest in the region.
In the past 15 years, with water from the dam being diverted to its tributary, river Sina, irrigation has been accessible to a wider network of farmers even in southern Solapur. This has given a boost to the cultivation of sugarcane – a very water-intensive crop – and to sugar factories in a district that is largely considered drought-prone. Sugarcane has become the most ubiquitous crop across the region.
“Solapur is now the biggest producer of sugar in Maharashtra with scope to develop many more factories,” said RV Dani, head of the sugar technology department at the Vasantdada Sugar Institute, a research-based institution in Pune.
Whenever the Ujjani dam is full, sugarcane productivity shoots up for at least two years in Solapur. Today, Solapur district has at least 30 medium and large sugar factories, of which less than half are co-owned by farmers’ cooperatives. They are dominated by politicians belonging to the Congress and the NCP. In 2011-'12, before the drought year, Solapur had contributed 18.6% of Maharashtra’s sugar production, the highest among all districts.
The fruits of this abundance, however, have not been shared uniformly among sugarcane farmers.
Not for all
Ranganath Gurav, Sol’s neighbour from Yawali, is facing a debt of Rs 14 lakh after he took a State Bank of India loan four years ago to irrigate six acres of his farm. “The local NCP MLA helps other farmers get canal water from the Ujjani, but I had to take this loan to get water through a pipe from 6 kms away,” said Gurav, who estimates it will take around five or six more years to pay off his loan if he produces at least 350 tonnes of sugarcane a year.
Like Sol, Gurav is a BJP supporter and believes things would improve for him if the saffron party came to power in Maharashtra. “Modi is a great man, but the NCP and Congress have a very strong influence over people here,” he said.
The influence of the political parties is evident during election season, when most work in the fields and factories comes to a standstill and political campaigns take up more time. Sugar factories run for around 180 days a year in two seasons, and as they wait for this winter’s cane crushing season to begin after Diwali, factory workers are busy riding bikes and vans from village to village, campaigning for their employers.
“People won’t tell you this openly, but sugar factory owners often threaten not to buy cane from farmers if they don’t vote for their party,” said Amol Patil, 33, a farmer from Kasigaon in southern Solapur.
Even though they are hesitant to talk about political pressure, most farmers across villages have the same story to tell about the way their cane is measured and bought by factories, irrespective of their political affiliations.
“The factories pay us the proper fixed rate – around Rs 1,800 to Rs 2,200 per tonne – for our cane, and sometimes even pay more if they have profits,” said Arjun Dharmapatil, a Kasigaon farmer. “But instead of buying fresh cane right after it is cut, factories often let it lie with us for months, so that they water content reduces and they get more sugar per tonne for the same rate.”
While last year’s drought has made many farmers conscious of the unreliability of relying on sugarcane and sugar factories, they believe government policies don’t leave them many other options. The central government issues a fixed rate – known as the Fair and Remunerative Price – for sugarcane, to ensure that farmers don’t get short-changed by factory owners.
“But there are no fixed rates for other crops we can grow, such as jowar or maize,” said Sol. “The prices for those crops are controlled by middlemen, and they bring us barely enough money to eat three meals a day.”
Lack of incentives
With a lack of incentives in other sectors, and more sugar factories coming up, farmers in Solapur have resigned themselves to the fact that sugarcane is here to stay.
Dilip Dhotre, a Maharashtra Navnirman Sena candidate from Pandharpur constituency and the MNS district president in Solapur, has a simpler explanation for the lure of expanding the sugar industry. “Even if you don’t directly make sugar, you can make a lot of money in this industry,” he said.
By the end of this year, Dhotre is going to start a small factory of his own, called Manase Agro Industries Ltd. Named after Raj Thackeray’s party, the factory will stop short of making processed sugar and make jaggery powder instead. “It is organic, can be used to make at least 42 different agro-based or medical products, and the factory needs fewer approvals to set up,” said Dhotre. “And like the sugar factories, it can yield profits of at least Rs 250 crore a year. So why will we not want to promote the sugar industry?”
Limited-time offer: Big stories, small price. Keep independent media alive. Become a Scroll member today!
Our journalism is for everyone. But you can get special privileges by buying an annual Scroll Membership. Sign up today!