Maharashtra's sugarcane cutters: A life of hardship as mills mechanise

When Lata Waghmare was six months pregnant, she travelled with her husband to cut sugarcane in Maharashtra's Solapur district, a region known for sugarcane farming. She worked through her pregnancy and gave birth in the fields. Days later, she resumed work, leaving her infant nearby while she laboured. One day, fearing a contractor's anger over a pause to tend to her child, she rushed to help load sugarcane bundles onto a tractor. When she returned, her three-month-old daughter lay crushed under its wheels. Ms. Waghmare spent five days grieving, only to have the contractor deduct 10 days' wages. There was no compensation, no police action, and no justice.

Years later, in her home in Kathoda village in Beed district, Ms. Waghmare still lives with that memory. For her and thousands of others, sugarcane cutting is not a choice but a means of survival. She is among an estimated 10 lakh migrant sugarcane cutters, half of them women, whose labour sustains Maharashtra's sugar industry, according to government estimates.

Every year, from October to March, workers from 13 districts, mostly Beed, migrate to the sugarcane-growing belts of western Maharashtra and to states such as Karnataka, Gujarat, and Tamil Nadu. Sugar mills hire contractors, known as mukadams, who bind workers through strict agreements. Though couples are employed as a single unit, wages are paid only to men.

The working conditions are punishing. Jyoti Thorat, who spent 15 years in the fields from her teenage years, described the daily routine: starting at 3 a.m., working 16 hours, and cutting two tonnes of sugarcane each day. A couple earned less than ₹80,000 for the entire season. Taking a day off—for illness, a family death, or menstrual cramps—incurred a fine of ₹600. If both husband and wife rested, the penalty doubled to ₹1,200. "Once you leave for the season, you don't come back. Not even if death comes calling at your doorstep," she said.

Ms. Thorat eventually quit. She now relies on her one acre of dry farmland and occasional daily-wage work, while her husband works as a driver. She is determined never to return to sugarcane cutting, but survival is difficult in a region with few industries and jobs, where even college graduates struggle to find employment.

Jayshree Ovhal also left the fields and now experiments with organic farming of pulses and foodgrains on her four-acre dry land, along with goat rearing. She wonders how many women can follow her path. "Everyone who has faced the horror in the fields wants to move out, and people like me already have. But I am not sure how many will be able to do so," she said.

Manisha Tokle, president of the Women Sugarcane Cutters Union and a Beed-based activist, said sugar mills historically evaded responsibility for workers. She alleged that financial and sexual exploitation, along with denial of basic rights such as toilets, remained absent from mainstream political discussions. In recent years, sustained protests and judicial intervention have compelled the state government to act. In a 2025 ruling, the Bombay High Court directed Maharashtra to implement comprehensive welfare measures for sugarcane cutters. However, Ms. Tokle noted, "Now, when sugarcane cutters are becoming vocal about their rights, mills are turning to mechanisation."

Sugar mill owners, on the other hand, contend that contractors, not the mills, are responsible for providing basic amenities. They argue that the workers are neither directly employed nor appointed by the mills. This position leaves workers in a precarious situation, caught between the mills' legal defence and the contractors' enforcement of harsh terms.

The industry's growing turn towards mechanisation adds a new layer of uncertainty. For the migrant workers, many of whom have no other skills or livelihoods, the shift could mean the loss of even the difficult and poorly compensated work they have long relied on. The dilemma is clear: the very machines that could reduce human suffering in the fields may also take away the only source of income for nearly a million workers.