The changing face of harvesters in Maharashtra

The Pathares stay near the Sonawanes who hail from the same village in Jalgaon. Unlike Pathare, Sanawanes are regular to Someshwar but are quick to add they were quite the exception than the norm in their village. “Most of them go to Gujarat to work in the cities or work in the brick klins. However, over the last few years, more of them are getting into cane harvesting — the money is good,” said Ranjit Sonawane who, along the families of his four other brothers, has been into cane harvesting for the past 8 years.

Cane harvestering labour are an integral part of the sugar industry in Maharashtra. Given the fragmented nature of holding, most mills prefer manual harvesters to the mechanical ones which are commonly used in sugar producing countries such as Brazil and Australia. Since the dawn of the sugar industry in the state, such labour has been drawn mainly from the districts of Beed, and Ahmednagar. At the start of the season, they migrate to the mills where they set up temporary camps and return home once the season is over. Mills book labourers by paying an advance amount to the middleman or mukadam who in turn ensures the labour is transported to the mills. Labourers are then paid per tonne of cane harvested and transported to the cane yard of the mill. Strangely, per tonne cane harvested and transported depends on whether it is transported by bullock cart or through trolleys pulled by tractors. On an average, around 5-6 lakh labour is engaged by the over 198 mills in the state for harvesting cane.

Sanjeev Babar, former managing director of the Maharashtra State Cooperative Sugar Factories Federation, sketched the genesis of this seasonal migration to the early days of the industry. “In the initial days when mills were few and far between, farmers themselves harvested and transported cane to the mills. However, as mills started increasing in number, a need was felt for exclusive manpower to take care of harvest and transport of the produce from farmers’ field. Back in 1950s, agriculture officers of mills started spreading out and the drought prone areas of Beed and Ahmednagar provided them with the needed labour,” he explained. Formalisation and unionisation of these labourers coincided with the rise of former minister and BJP leader Gopinath Munde who himself hailed form the Wanjari community which forms the bulk of the harvesting laobour. Since then, harvesters have become synonymous with Beed and parts of Ahmednagar and developed as a political and pressure group to reckon with.

Now, almost 70 years later, the industry is witnessing a churn wherein the harvesters from Beed are being replaced in a slow but steady way by those from the tribal belts of the state. Other than Jalgaon, they are now being drawn from districts of Dhule and Nandurbar in North Maharashtra while some have also migrated from the Melghhat regions of Amravati district. Sanjay Khatal, managing director of the Maharashtra State Cooperative Sugar Factories Federation, was quick to point out that tribal labour in cane harvesting is not a new phenomenon, however, their presence in the cane fields of Maharashtra was less earlier. “Till about five years back, such labour used to travel to Karnataka and Gujarat. Of the 8 lakh harvesters engaged in Maharashtra, barely 2-4 per cent were from the tribal areas. However, now that has increased to 15-20 per cent,” he said.

Khatal pointed to a few cardinal reasons for this shift in the demographics of cane harvesters. Barring 2018-19, monsoons have been more than adequate in Maharashtra and thus, most of the migratory labourers from Beed who own land themselves, have decided not to migrate and take care of their fields instead. “This void has been taken over by tribal harvesters who decided to stay in Maharashtra than migrate out of the state,” he said.

Similarly Rajendra Yadav, managing director of Someshwar Cooperative Sugar Mill, talked about the relatively better wages the sugar sector provides them for this increased migration. “Tribals form the bulk of informal daily wage earners in sectors such as construction, road laying etc., both in their home districts as well as Gujarat. Better pay in the sugar sector has attracted them to this — here they get paid in lumpsum at the start of the season and then throughout the season per tonne of cane harvested,” he said. On an average, a tribal couple gets around Rs 70,000-75,000 lumpsum as advance amount and depending upon how they transport cane to the mill, is paid anything between Rs 350-550/tonne of cane harvested. “Their daily wages back at home would be far less,” Yadav summed up. Yadav’s mill employs around 3,000-3,500 such labour of whom over the years around 40 per cent are drawn from the tribal Bhil and Thakkar communities.

This was vouched for by Virendra Borse who is a Mukadam from the Malegaon region of Nashik district. The bulk of his labour force is drawn from the tribal populations in Jalgaon, Nashik and Dhule. “Back there, they are paid measly wages of Rs 100-200 per day as daily wage earners. While the work of harvesting cane is physically strenuous, they easily end up earning around Rs 2-3 lakhs during the season,” he said. For sugar mills, tribal labour comes cheap — instead of the Rs 1.5-2 lakh advance, they have to pay to book thodni kamgar from Beed or Ahmednagar, tribal labour can be booked between Rs 70,000-80,000 only. However, Yadav added a caveat — “the work done by labourers from Beed and Ahmednagar is far superior as they are far skillful than the tribal labour. However, as the former are now slowly exiting the field, we have to make do with what is available,” he explained.