UP polls: Sugarcaneconomics 101
Show me a person who really knows how these elections will end and I’ll show you a spot in western UP where there’s no sign of any sugarcane this time of the year.
If not bundles of chopped cane laid out on heaving bullock carts, then on full-blown trucks that look like they are carrying a hell of a lot of fat hay from the distance. I even saw piled-up sand being carried – except it was not sand, but processed gur (jaggery) – on beds of trucks. And that’s not even counting the sugar that comes out of the mills from this part of the country and into our homes.
But sitting at a tea stall next to the Public Inter College at Kairana in Shamli district, I see gleaming New Holland tractors each with two giant empty trays putter by one by one.
“That has to be at least 400 quintals (40,000 kg) each tractor,” pipes up Rishi Pal, whom I assume to be a cane farmer, but am told by the man sitting next to him that he’s a ‘mistri’, but “he knows enough farmers here to be right”.
Those empty tractors, I am told now by the expert panel sitting at the tea stall, are all from across the UP-Haryana border and are returning to Panipat after selling their cane to mills here in UP. “Their cane has far less sugar than UP sugarcanes,” Pal reminds us. And, perhaps more importantly for the non-gourmand, the Haryanvi cane is sold at a cheaper price to the mills in this area than the ‘local’ western UP variety.
SUGAR FOR THEIR SUGAR
Akram Akhtar, in his grey sweater, jeans and sport shows, looks more like a Delhi student union leader than a social activist working with agricultural labourers and brick kiln workers. His Afkar Foundation has also helped in rehabilitating victims of the 2013 Muzaffarnagar riots. “I am also a farmer,” he tells me, with the confidence of a non-theorist. Lighting up another cigarette, he explains to me sugarcaneconomics.
“Farmers are not bound to sell their cane to a particular mill. They are free to sell it to anyone.
But mills do have their own farmers with their captive output. They are usually paid Rs 315 per quintal. ‘Outside’ farmers are paid Rs 350 and paid by cheque.”
Now comes the tricky part. As a farmer, one has a basic quota of 800 quintals of cane one can sell to local mills. “My basic quota will decrease if I am bound to a local mill.” Thus, the need to sell ‘outside’.
Mill-owners release payments in installments. All sugar mills in western UP shut in mid-April and reopen in November for the next season. “Last year’s (November 2015) payment was released in February 2016.
But after demonetisation on November 8, payments have been increasingly delayed,” says Akhtar. Agricultural labourers, lying at the bottom of the sugareconomic pyramid have been worst hit.And with cash less in the air, cheque payments have their unique problems outside yet-to-be-plastic rural UP.
“A worker may have a bank account under the name of Vinod. But he gets a cheque written out to Kallu, the name by which he is known by everyone.” Then there are bank tellers who have a knack of finding some problem or another with a cheque. Vinod-Kallu, not being Raghuram Rajan, is left to run from pillar to post to sugarcane.
FOR A FISTFUL OF RUPEES
But my education in sugarcaneconomics took a tractor-dent when I asked a farmer clipclopping down the Grand Trunk Road on his cart bursting with sugarcane, “Yeh aakh apka khet se hain?” On getting no response, I repeated my question. He looked down from his perch as he approached me slowly like Clint Eastwood on a bullock.
I was told quickly that the Hindi word for sugarcane was not the same as the Bengali one, it was ‘gunna’. “Sorry, yeh gunna apka khet se hain?” I asked again as he was passing me. His perplexed face gave way to a quiet nod. The jew’s harp-and-whistle tune from the spaghetti western UP classic, For a Few Rupees, was left ringing in my ears.
If not bundles of chopped cane laid out on heaving bullock carts, then on full-blown trucks that look like they are carrying a hell of a lot of fat hay from the distance. I even saw piled-up sand being carried – except it was not sand, but processed gur (jaggery) – on beds of trucks. And that’s not even counting the sugar that comes out of the mills from this part of the country and into our homes.
But sitting at a tea stall next to the Public Inter College at Kairana in Shamli district, I see gleaming New Holland tractors each with two giant empty trays putter by one by one.
“That has to be at least 400 quintals (40,000 kg) each tractor,” pipes up Rishi Pal, whom I assume to be a cane farmer, but am told by the man sitting next to him that he’s a ‘mistri’, but “he knows enough farmers here to be right”.
Those empty tractors, I am told now by the expert panel sitting at the tea stall, are all from across the UP-Haryana border and are returning to Panipat after selling their cane to mills here in UP. “Their cane has far less sugar than UP sugarcanes,” Pal reminds us. And, perhaps more importantly for the non-gourmand, the Haryanvi cane is sold at a cheaper price to the mills in this area than the ‘local’ western UP variety.
SUGAR FOR THEIR SUGAR
Akram Akhtar, in his grey sweater, jeans and sport shows, looks more like a Delhi student union leader than a social activist working with agricultural labourers and brick kiln workers. His Afkar Foundation has also helped in rehabilitating victims of the 2013 Muzaffarnagar riots. “I am also a farmer,” he tells me, with the confidence of a non-theorist. Lighting up another cigarette, he explains to me sugarcaneconomics.
“Farmers are not bound to sell their cane to a particular mill. They are free to sell it to anyone.
But mills do have their own farmers with their captive output. They are usually paid Rs 315 per quintal. ‘Outside’ farmers are paid Rs 350 and paid by cheque.”
Now comes the tricky part. As a farmer, one has a basic quota of 800 quintals of cane one can sell to local mills. “My basic quota will decrease if I am bound to a local mill.” Thus, the need to sell ‘outside’.
Mill-owners release payments in installments. All sugar mills in western UP shut in mid-April and reopen in November for the next season. “Last year’s (November 2015) payment was released in February 2016.
But after demonetisation on November 8, payments have been increasingly delayed,” says Akhtar. Agricultural labourers, lying at the bottom of the sugareconomic pyramid have been worst hit.And with cash less in the air, cheque payments have their unique problems outside yet-to-be-plastic rural UP.
“A worker may have a bank account under the name of Vinod. But he gets a cheque written out to Kallu, the name by which he is known by everyone.” Then there are bank tellers who have a knack of finding some problem or another with a cheque. Vinod-Kallu, not being Raghuram Rajan, is left to run from pillar to post to sugarcane.
FOR A FISTFUL OF RUPEES
But my education in sugarcaneconomics took a tractor-dent when I asked a farmer clipclopping down the Grand Trunk Road on his cart bursting with sugarcane, “Yeh aakh apka khet se hain?” On getting no response, I repeated my question. He looked down from his perch as he approached me slowly like Clint Eastwood on a bullock.
I was told quickly that the Hindi word for sugarcane was not the same as the Bengali one, it was ‘gunna’. “Sorry, yeh gunna apka khet se hain?” I asked again as he was passing me. His perplexed face gave way to a quiet nod. The jew’s harp-and-whistle tune from the spaghetti western UP classic, For a Few Rupees, was left ringing in my ears.
