As the first monsoon showers hit Maharashtra in the second week of June, villages in the Marathwada region of Maharashtra were abuzz with activity. Bullocks drew plough lines into the rain-sprayed black soil, farm labourers swayed atop tempos and spilled out of autorickshaws, and women bent over in the fields, rapidly sowing seeds. Most of them were planting cotton, a rain dependent crop in this drought-prone region. “Look at how the dry ground is just sucking up the rainwater,” said Ganpat Ganeshrao Shinde , a farmer from Parbhani district who was cleaning his well in anticipation of a rise in water level.Alternating the dry patches of land preparing for cotton were dense clumps of young sugarcane with lime green swords rising higher than most villagers. They were planted well before monsoon, and were in larger swathes near the omnipresent sugar factories and water tanks. Their roots were moist and the cane plump. This landscape was the telling picture of the water inequity that led to Maharashtra announcing record production of sugarcane in 2014-15, the same year its sugar belt declared a second drought after 2012-13. “Like the son who gets the larger helping of food, sugarcane gets all the water while other crops wilt,” says farmer Shinde.Farmers will work the fields, but last year 8,000 villages in Marathwada had a 50% fall in crop yield.(In pic: A farmer in a sugarcane field )About 4% of farmed land in Maharashtra is under sugarcane, but it consumes 71.5% of irrigated water, including wells. The state is the second-highest producer of sugarcane after UP, but 79% of this is grown in droughtprone regions. Sugarcane cultivation and sugar industries have for decades received privileged treatment, thanks to the factories being either owned or controlled by the state’s politicians. In 2012-13, Marathwada added 20 sugar factories even as villages were supplied drinking water through tankers. Today, there are around 11 lakh hectares under sugarcane and 205 sugar factories in the state, of which 70 are in Marathwada alone.(In pic: Ganpat Ganeshrao Shinde in Parbhani hopes for rain to revive his well)On June 11, the Centre announced a package of Rs 6,000 crore as interest-free loans to sugar industries to pay arrears to farmers – dues they have been consistently defaulting on citing low market price of sugar. In 2013, it had allotted Rs 6,600 crore. Even the Indian Sugar Mills Association said loans did not address the basic problem of surplus sugar (10 million tonnes this year) and depressed global and national prices. They would prefer the government to buy 2.5 million tonnes of sugar stocks from them.(In pic: The family of 37-year-old farmer Mukhiram Khare under the tree where he hanged himself)The sugar sector has always been treated with such bailout packages, and subsides such as a rise in import duty to 40%, raised export subsidy on raw sugar, and waiver of excise duty in ethanol. These have been incentivising the growth of an unsustainable industry. Stockholm Water prize winner Madhav Chitale has held that wrong policies pursued by successive state governments is the reason for the crisis in sugar industry.(In pic: A free water tanker from a good samaritan in drought-prone Parbhani)The greatest damage of this entrenched sugar politics is the chronic water scarcity it has caused and now suffers with. Sugarcane now coexists with tanker-fed villages. The sector has depleted ground water levels so dangerously that water management experts unanimously recommend that to ensure water for drinking and farming as early as next year, sugarcane cultivation and production must be regulated strongly in drought affected regions.(In pic: Ploughing begins in Marathwada)Since 2012, Marathwada and Vidarbha regions have faced truant weather. The drought of 2012 was followed by satisfactory rain in 2013, but again hailstorms in March 2014, poor monsoon in 2014, unseasonal rains in November 2014 and March 2015. Natural calamities have been worsened by government mismanagement like dam scams, irrigation scams, and policies that privilege the waterintensive surplus-stock sugarcane. A 2007 CAG report found that the Maharashtra Sugar Commissionerate sanctioned capacities without considering water availability.In 2014, Marathwada had a reservoir storage of 47%, but still faced a drought; water has been so exploited that good rains — predicted this year — are not enough to irrigate fields or provide people drinking water.Maharashtra ranks second in sugarcane production, but it boasts of the highest yield in the country — 80 tonnes per hectare — more than UP’s 40-60 tonnes per hectare.“But one look at the real cost of water and we can see how inefficient sugarcane production is,” says Parineeta Dandekar researcher at SANDRP . To produce one kilo of sugar, UP uses 1,044 litres of water, while Maharashtra uses double, 2,068 litres. This does not include more water used by sugar mills to crush and process the sugar, which is an average of 4 lakh litres per day.Mardaj village in Prabhani district sits on the bank of the river Godavari, but the river bed is dry (the feeder dam has not released water for some years now) and so are the fields, except if it is sugarcane. In early June, villagers sat quietly in the house of Mukhiram Khare, a 37-year-old sugarcane farmer who hanged himself on the single tree in his courtyard 5 days earlier. “He dug a bore last year for the sugarcane, then dug another, and then another,” says his father Triyambaka Khare Irrigation expert Purandare explains that 71% of irrigated land in the state is not irrigated by large dams or canals, but by wells.Marathwada has reportedly been drilling as many as 10,000 borewells per month in this drought. Travelling rigs from AP and TN are a common sight. In 247 villages, the draw of groundwater exceeds the recharge, which means the gains of rain harvesting and good weather are defeated by excess use. An official in the Osmanabad collectorate said that in nearby villages over 200 bore wells were dug in a 50-sq-km area, each nearly 800-900 ft deep. In Latur, Harishchandra Yerme, a farmer who has himself dug 60 bore wells, says the density of bores is so high that “the Marathwada landscape is like a sieve”.Khare’s father says lack of water caused a 50% shortage of yield. “Once you plant sugarcane, unlike food crops like pulses or oilseed, you get locked in it for 17 months,” he says. The sugar factories in the neighbourhood bought the cane in October but had not paid Khare for two years. “The water is gone, no money came,” says his brother Hanuman . Sugar mills routinely transfer their losses to the farmer by way of defaulted payments. But despite the liabilities and water shortage, many farmers continue to farm sugarcane, calling it “the golden crop” or “insurance crop”.Sugarcane is hardy, needs little tending, and has a year-long cycle of 11 to 17 months. The farmer does not incur any processing cost as in paddy, pulses or cotton, because sugar mills buy the cane immediately, often hiring and paying labourers — local and migrated — to harvest the fields. In the last five years in Maharashtra, sugarcane prices had risen dramatically compared to other crops like cotton, soybean or paddy. This year, the Fair Remunerative Price was increased only by about 5%. Sudhir Panwar, of the UP planning commission says while the price is higher than some other crops, it does not cover cost of production, most of which is irrigation and pesticide.Farmers swear by cane also because the industry has political patronage. Historically, western Maharashtra was the seat of cooperative movements by sugarcane growers.The Marathwada region, home of the Marathas, is also the bastion of state politics. Mills benefit from political connections, and politicians extract benefit from them. “Most of this is done by controlling resources, especially water, the most important ingredient in cultivation and production,” says the water researcher Parineeta Dandekar. Cooperative mills exist today (110 of total 205), but many are defunct or steadfastly privatising.In 2009-14, 13 of the 30 state cabinet members in the Congress-NCP government owned sugar factories or controlled sugar cooperatives. During the same time, sugar baron Sharad Pawar was the union agriculture minister . Policy measures were, therefore, dictated by the sugar lobby. The current Maharashtra state BJP government has relatively fewer sugar barons, and has been stricter. It recently banned digging of bores more than 200 feet deep, with fines or imprisonment for repeated offenders. It also refused the sugar lobby’s demand for Rs 3,509 crore to pay the pending Rs 3,800 crore for cane this year, 20% of the amount payable to farmers. But after the central BJP government, trying to win over the sugarcane votebank in UP before the 2017 election, announced Rs 6,000 crore interest-free loans.Maharashtra’s sugar commissioner says that sugar factories in the state are defaulting payment now so as to be eligible for the interest-free loan. The cooperatives minister had announced relaxing the distance rule that mandates sugar mills to stay 15 kms apart — the only existing clause to control proliferation of factories.In the conflict over sugarcane and industry losses, water goes completely unregulated. ICRISAT has found that Marathwada and Vidarbha are more vulnerable to climate changes than any other part of Maharashtra. “Steps are needed to not only to limit sugarcane but also encourage the traditional crops of the region — pulses and oilseeds, crops India has gross shortfall in,” says Dandekar. “Long term measures may not win immediate political favour, but are now more urgent than ever.”