Sugar

If you drive through rural Maharashtra and look out your windows, you'll see pretty much one major crop on both sides- sugarcane- and lots of it. A large chunk of India's sugar comes from this sugar belt region. It's a huge cash crop, and farmers growing it have enjoyed the benefits of handsome government subsidies, cooperative factories, fixed prices for the commodity, and the fact that the crop is relatively easy to grow. The results of the sugar phenomenon have been pretty interesting, and I got a chance to see some of them firsthand when I visited Malinagar.
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Malinagar is a little village, in the Solapur district of Maharashtra, about 4 hours away from Pune. As you drive in, you see plots of sugarcane on every side, with the distant skyline dotted with the smokestacks of factories. Aroon, his friend Karthik, and I were visiting my aunt and uncle, who had a farmhouse in the area and were kind enough to offer to show us around the village for a few days, taking us to a couple different places critical to the development of the area.
As we jumped from government hospital to Gram Panchayat to the cooperative dairy, I saw firsthand the patronage politics system so rooted in rural India, which I had only really seen in Hindi films before then. Nowhere was this more apparent than in the sugar factory- the director of which was scripted perfectly- crisp white shirt and slacks, shades indoors, a disinterested tolerating expression, and a crew of cronies at his sides.
With his blessings (literally, we were made to touch his feet), we were able to see the sugar factory. This Sugar Daddy was a classic icon of the problems of the sugar system in Maharashtra.
Sugar was introduced in a big way in the post 1960's green revolution, and with it came the rise of the cooperative movement. Initially, it was supposed to be a good way for farmers to get fair prices and ownership in the sugar that came from the sugarcane they grew. But eventually, richer landowners wrested control of the sugarcane cooperatives, often taking advantage of the poorer, illiterate farmers. While they were reduced to laborers, dependent on whatever price the sugar factory decided, sugar factory owners made money off government subsidies for sugarcane cooperatives.
Meanwhile, from the other side, sugarcane farmers overplanted their fields, and the Green Revolution model of input intensive monoculture left productivity sagging. So the same sugarcane that used to be sold for about INR 1300 a ton fell to as low at 700..and with farmers investing most of their land into the crop, they starting getting into a cycle of debt. There was also a social element involved, sugarcane being a relatively labor non-intensive crop to grow, many of the farmers had more free time, turning to alcoholism and slowly shying away from rigorous agriculture.
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Sugar belt towns exploded because of the sugar industry, but many now suffer the malaise of falling prices. But Akluj showed no signs of illness. This is mainly because of one family- the Mohite-Patils. One of the Mohite Patils is the rural development minister for India..so lots of monye was obviously flowing into the area. Everything had the M-P stamp on it, from the local poultry, to the factories, to the hospitals and chaiwallahs. He was a god. We actually had the good grace of seeing one of the M-P brothers ride into town, with what seemed like a stampede of worshippers following him singing songs, chanting, and falling out of jeeps and 3 wheelers.
Clearly, it wasnt just sugar that was propelling this town.
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Sugarcane has many ends. Of course sugar is one of them. At the local distillery, we saw another- alcohols. A couple months ago, I had talked to Mr. Balu Sarma, head of R&D at Praj, a Pune-based chemicals company. He talked about how it was hard to break into the ethanol market in India, mostly due to the grip of the oil companies on the auto companies. So most of the ethanol that Praj manufactured was shipped abroad. It seemed a bit of a shame that Brazil could basically run its entire country on sugarcane derived ethanol, but in Maharashtra, ethanol was not much of an option.
Here in Akluj, the distillery was producing alcohols mostly for chemicals companies, but they did say that there were plans to expand into ethanol. I have no doubt that these plans are stymied by the same concerns facing Dr. Sarma out in Praj. There just isn't much of an incentive for factories to go into the highly expensive final step of making fuel grade ethanol.
And unlike the US , where rising gas prices have seemed to drive an alternative energy push, or at least an alternate energy debate, here in India the consumer is protectedwith government set oil prices (albeit more expensive than the US). So while innovation in terms of car size and car prices has occurred in the Indian auto industry (Tata Nano), innovation in fuel efficiency and alternative fuels has lagged behind.
*note: While alternative fuels lag behind, alternative energy is becoming more common, and sugarcane bagasse was being used in cogeneration schemes to power the sugarcane factories it came from- a step forward.
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Back at my aunt's farmhouse, we had yet another chai. EVerywhere we went, we were offered chai, and I happily took it. But in most places, it was literally sugar water...so I probably went through 10-15 spoons of sugar a day. Not much for a place literally swimming in it.
One morning we went out to the fields to check out how harvesting was done. There, laborers from inner maharashtra, often from the tribal belt area, had come to cut away the leaves, stack the canes and pile them into bullock carts. I watched in awe..but then someone told me there might be snakes underneath all the residues..so I quickly retreated. I realized that the sugarcane industry is still stuck in a slightly older era, and will need to innovate fast, even in a blessed area like Akluj/Malinagar. It still relies on high water usage, high inputs, and high govrnment subsidies. The cooperative system, is unfortunately, often quite corrupt. And you can't eat sugarcane (the organic farmers argument).
But you can make juice out of it, and we had a tall glass of it when we got back to the farmhouse.

-Nikhil