The sugar industry in Maharashtra has appreciated the central government’s green signal to the state’s request to finance procurement of mechanised sugar harvesters via the Rail Kaushal Vikas Yojana (RKVY).
This would pave the way for procurement of more harvesters, and will also help to tide over the labour shortage we have been facing, according to the industry.
Migrant labourers from Beed, Ahmednagar, Jalgoan, Nandurbar, and Amravati among other parts have been involved in cane harvesting in Maharashtra. Most of the labourers are from the Vanjara community — among Other Backward Classes (OBC), and tribal communities of Bhil, and Pavara among others. In the beginning of the cane harvesting season, these labourers enter into an agreement with mills via labour contractors after a payment for booking. Following this, the labourers — who normally comprise a husband-wife duo — are paid according to per tonne of cane harvested.
However, paucity of harvesters have cast a shadow over the past few seasons. Last season, harvesting operations by many mills were delayed.
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PremiumMechanical harvesters have now been promoted as an option, but most mills have been slow in the adoption. Complaints about excess vegetative matter, which reduces sugar recovery and leads to difficulties in operations in small cultivation areas, have been common nowadays. Manufacturers, meanwhile, claimed that they have “made enough investments in research and development” to ensure that they overcome the difficulties at the earliest.
Given that heavy investment requires most mills to promote farmers’ groups to purchase machines on guarantee of hiring them, harvesters have many advantages including faster harvesting and lesser requirement of manual labour. Also, mills and transporters have raised an issue of labourers duping them by not turning up for work even after accepting advances. The Maharashtra Cooperative Sugar Factories Federation has raised this issue, and asked for the usage of RKVY funds to help subsidise purchase of harvesting machines.
After an intense follow up, the central government last week sanctioned Rs 192.75 crore to subsidise the procurement of mechanised harvesters. The state government will provide the bridge amount to make the whole corpus of Rs 350 crore, which would act as the 40 per cent subsidy amount that the state government provides for the purchase of harvesters. Maharashtra has around 900 harvesters, and this corpus would help in providing 300-400 more such machines.
