A Sweet Mess
Find your way into Maharashtra’s sweet yet sticky business of sugarcane farming.
From Maharashtra’s decadent puranpolis that envelop gud & chana dal, to the perfectly balanced Gujarati dal with a hint of sweetness, India’s affinity for the ‘liquid gold’ has gilded regional dishes across the country. Jaggery’s bigger and more popular sibling, sugar, was reportedly first crystallized by the Gupta Dynasty around 350 CE, and it soon took the world by storm. The soluble crystals, with its new-found sheen and convenience, have replaced jars of traditional sweeteners like jaggery and honey in pantries across the globe. Aided by the conducive weather, India emerged as the second-largest producer of sugar in the world and simultaneously ranked as its highest consumer. It’s two populous states Maharashtra and Uttar Pradesh together produce 66% of sugar’s parent crop — Sugarcane — in India.
While the crop has been an essential part of our culinary identity and a source of ethanol, it comes with a weight that looms heavily above our heads. The scales tipped when sugarcane’s production boomed to unsustainable levels. India long surpassed the level of self-sufficiency in sugar production, with the country producing 310 lakh tonnes, as opposed to its requirement of 250 lakh tonnes. Sugarcane’s unsustainable growth is rooted deep down in its high water consumption.
One can map the inefficient production of the sugarcane across India’s states, with its yield and water consumption drastically differing. A report by the Commission for Agricultural Costs and Prices (CACP) states that every kilogram of sugarcane needs 2048 liters of water in Maharashtra as opposed to 1044 liters per kilogram in Uttar Pradesh. Apart from the sheer volume of resources required to produce sugarcane, what really knocks the ball out of the park is that 79.8% of the highly water-intensive crop grows in drought-prone areas in Maharashtra. While farmer suicide rates soar in Vidarbha and Marathwada owing to hard-hitting droughts, the water-guzzling crop acquires more acreage. Despite villages having to supplement their groundwater with water tanks, sugar mills and their cooperatives continue to drain the limited resources.
Why do we continue to cultivate sugarcane at such rates? The answer lies in the political power that cradles the industry. Fortune India spoke to Sandip Sukhtankar, a researcher at Dartmouth College, who revealed that 101 Chairmen out of 183 mills in Maharashtra had contested the State or National elections between 1993 and 2005.
Sugar mills operate on a cooperative model that disperses risks and benefits. This structure has led to mass power accumulation in the hands of those at the apex. Rural development has become a platform for political growth and political power a platform for the industry’s (and investments) growth. Farmers who face climate & economic uncertainties often choose to stand under the protective umbrella of the warped industry while the land beneath their feet parches.
While Congress traditionally held tight reigns over the rural sugar-political scene, the offshoot Nationalist Congress Party led by Sharad Pawar, rose as an aggressive lobby group for the sector. The vested interests have always been translucent with politicians having high stakes in the industry, yet the mutually-beneficial nature of the relationship has grown the enterprise over the decades. The farmers have enjoyed the benefits of low input costs owing to subsidized fertilizers, power, and irrigation. On the agro-processing side, the sugar mills have further enjoyed several benefits, one being an upward trending Minimum Support Price (MSP) for the commodity. Recently, Sharad Pawar further lobbied for an increase in prices and a bailout package on account of COVID-19. All of these interconnected ties have led to a web of impermeable strength, with a concentration of power in a few hands.
While the sweet benefits reaped by the sugar industry are concentrated, the bitter costs are diffused amongst taxpayers and consumers. The industry is constantly ailing due to overabundant production and a consequent decline in prices when national and foreign markets, like Brazil, are flooded with the product. The sick industry is periodically on a lookout for relief packages and its interests are well-represented in the government, often at the cost of funds for other agricultural projects. A skewed development is further witnessed between the Western Marathwada and Eastern Vidarbha, as the dry western region is increasingly irrigated to meet chronic deficiencies of water.
While breaking the political nexus has been a Sisyphean task, it still remains an imperative one to restore ecological balance. The industry’s complex web needs to be carefully unraveled to pave the way for better practices. Carefully considered irrigation, diversification to climate-suited cash crops, and cautious dismantling of concentrated power are few of the possible approaches to ensure that both — the farmers and the land — get to thrive. It’s finally time to clean up the bittersweet trail left behind by the sugarcane industry.
