Maharashtra’s sugarcane dilemma: cutters seek a way out as mills turn to machines
Migrant sugarcane cutters in Maharashtra face extreme labor exploitation, including dangerous working conditions and wage theft by contractors. As sugar mills increasingly adopt mechanical harvesting, these vulnerable workers are losing their livelihoods without adequate support or compensation.
Why it matters
It sheds light on the human cost of industrial modernization and the systemic abuse of migrant labor in the agricultural sector.
When Lata Waghmare was six months pregnant, she accompanied her husband to cut sugarcane in drought-prone Solapur, one of Maharashtra’s major sugarcane-growing districts. She completed her full term in the fields and gave birth to a baby girl. Just five or six days later, she resumed work, leaving her infant nearby while she and her husband toiled.
One day, fearing the contractor’s anger over her stopping to tend to her child, Ms. Waghmare hurried to help load bundles of sugarcane onto a tractor. When she returned, her three-month-old daughter lay crushed beneath its wheels. Ms. Waghmare spent the next five days grieving, only to have the contractor deduct 10 days’ wages from her earnings. There was no compensation, no police intervention and, ultimately, no justice.
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