India is vying to become the world’s top sugar producer, but for its millions of sugarcane growers life is far from sweet as the nation prepares for an election next week.
Their woes are part of a deep crisis in rural India, with debts and drought driving thousands of farmers to suicide, putting Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi on the back foot as he runs for a second term.
“We have not got a single penny for four months of crop that we have sold,” said Ved Pal, gazing worriedly at stacks of sugarcane piled up on his farm in Uttar Pradesh state in northern India.
“Last year’s payments are still due. I have lost interest in farming, but there is nothing else to do,” he said in the village of Painga.
Sugarcane used to be an attractive option, traditionally offering much higher returns than other crops. The plant is also hardy, but thirsty — further depleting groundwater reserves in many areas.
“This crop can sustain heavy rain, hailstorm and even if it catches fire we can still recover some crop, and we have [a] captive market available as well,” Pal said.
One of Modi’s economic successes over the past five years is taming inflation, the pernicious increase in prices that has long bedeviled India’s economy.
In the case of sugar, this has been achieved by keeping a lid on the price at which sugar mills — which process sugarcane — can sell their produce.
However, this set price is so low that many mills are losing money. The amount they can afford to pay growers is paltry, if they can pay at all, leaving farmers high and dry.
As of last month, about US$3 billion was owed to sugarcane growers, according to government data.
“The government needs to set a higher minimum price for sugar — adequate to cover the cost of cane,” Abhinash Verma of the Indian Sugar Mill Association said.
Uttar Pradesh and Maharashtra are the main sugar producing states, growing 75 percent of India’s output, and their 25 million sugarcane farmers are an important vote bank.
“We got this government to power on hopes that they will bring us good days and double farm income,” said Anil Kumar, another sugarcane farmer in Uttar Pradesh. “We can accept income not doubling, but at least let us have what we were earning.”
However, it is not just these two states and it is not only sugar farmers who are suffering.
About 70 percent of rural households depend primarily on agriculture for their livelihood, according to the UN, and life for many is tough due to drought, extreme weather and dysfunctional markets.
Their plight has sparked angry demonstrations in the buildup to the election.
On Tuesday, the main opposition Congress party released its manifesto promising to waive all farmer loans and ensure “remunerative prices,” saying it has “heard the cry of anguish of farmers and feels the pain of their acute distress.”
However, this might come too late for Kumar.
“I don’t have money to send my kids to a proper college,” he said. “They spend half the day helping me out at the farm. When will they study?”
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