The Life on Wheels_ untold Story of Sugarcane Cutters

 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 did not miss a day of work during her pregnancy. Just five or six days after she gave birth to a girl, 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.
 

Reading this story in The Hindu shook me deeply and opened my eyes towards the population or group that is so close, yet always overlooked—the sugarcane cutters in Maharashtra, who currently are around 5 lakh in population in Maharashtra alone, which is around 68% of the total.

Normally, October to March lasts the harvesting season of sugarcane in Maharashtra. The harvesting industry till today remains highly manual and informal, depending upon the sugarcane cutters who migrate with their families from agrarian-distressed areas of Beed and Marathwada to the sugar belt of Western Maharashtra. These families migrate every year during these seasons and settle in temporary settlements.

As a kid growing up in the sugar belt of Maharashtra, I have seen them come and go with their entire lives on bullock carts, setting up the tents and taking them off as they leave. I have observed them working endlessly, when their day starts before dawn and ends way too late. It’s only now that I realise and see the sufferings and horrors that they go through while doing all this.

Most of these families are from lower castes, landless and illiterate people who have been engaged in the occupation for generations.
They sacrifice many things when they shift for several months, taking everything with them and leaving many things behind. These things include their bonds to the place, their kin and the entire pool of emotions that comes with it. Moreover, what is also left behind is the school in which the child is enrolled and the treatment and care of the pregnant women who are also forced to travel along.

As they travel and settle in the sugar belts of Maharashtra, the crisis lies beyond population skew. It affects the patterns of family, marriage and kinship. It impacts their opportunities and means and lands them into a vicious cycle of poverty and distress.
Sugarcane cutters are employed by contractors with no formal terms of employment. This pushes them into informalisation traps and limits the sources of livelihood for the family. Furthermore, many children above 14 help their parents with the job.

For a woman, the employment presents a crisis on multiple fronts. Recently, the racket of female hysterectomies in Beed paints a picture of the reality. Women move with their husbands and children, work with their husbands in jodi, with no separate income or financial autonomy. Women’s health is unheard of, with no proper sanitation facilities or safe working conditions. Taking leave would cost meals to the family, which has to work even when women are pregnant, lactating, or with their newborns.

Furthermore, around 4,00,000+ children above 14 years of age walk alongside their parents in these fields. These children are unable to complete their education due to frequent migrations, nor are they able to avail other opportunities. They suffer from inadequate nourishment and childhood care. Most girls are forced to look after the household and younger siblings while their parents work hard.
This picture of the sugarcane workers presents not only the harsh social realities but also psychological, cultural and generational distress that remains unaccounted for. These migrants remain sidelined by mainstream politics and legislation.

In March 2025, a division bench of the Bombay High Court directed the Maharashtra government to strictly implement structural and legal reforms to improve the conditions of the sugarcane workers.
A comprehensive legislative framework to regulate and recommend the terms of employment and livelihood must be followed with strong political will. Formalising the nature of employment and regulating the settlements would reduce the exploitation of workers.

However, the change needs to penetrate beyond the surface to include welfare and rehabilitation measures.
Improving the conditions of women requires formal terms of employment, equal pay, paid leaves, alongside sanitary measures and safe working conditions. Health-awareness camps and temporary crèche houses can help women improve their conditions. Furthermore, women need to be trained and skilled to improve their chances of livelihood alongside their financial inclusion.

Children of the sugarcane workers need means to continue their education through means of ‘साखरशाळा’ (Sakharshala) or seasonal schools. Further, their nutrition must be maintained through rationed grains and mid-day meal schemes. Employment opportunities beyond their traditional roles can help them step out of the poverty traps.
Sugarcane cutters need to be organised and represented through unions and their concerns voiced by civil society.

As manual jobs get replaced by the mechanisation of the industry and future generations move out of their traditional jobs, rehabilitation and construction of a life for these workers must remain a priority.

The story of these sugarcane cutters is not only a story of migration or employment but one of a pregnant women carrying her child to fields, a man with burden to feed his family and a child who dreams to get out of this distress.
Pulled and drawn by bullocks, the life on wheels needs to move not only from one field to another with the change of season but towards dignity, assurance and a life worth living.