UP sugar farmers' anger spills over

The sugarcane crisis in Uttar Pradesh is taking ominous proportions. With private sugar mills, which buy over 80 per cent sugarcane cultivated in the state, unwilling to start crushing in a hurry, farmers have started getting restive.

On Monday, farmers in Meerut staged a demonstration before the office of the divisional commissioner and burnt sugarcane.

They served a notice saying they would intensify their agitation and fill the commissioner's office with sugarcane if the private mills failed to start crushing immediately.

A worried sugarcane development minister, Naseemuddin Siddiqui, summoned the representatives of the private sugar mills to Lucknow on Tuesday. The meeting, said an executive of a large mill, remained inconclusive.

The minister failed to get a categorical assurance from the mills that they would follow the crushing schedule presented by him in the Assembly. The schedule said the mills would start crushing in phases from November 12.

Across Uttar Pradesh, about 15 million farmers sell sugarcane to 146 sugar mills "" 83 of which are privately owned and the remaining 63 are either owned by the state or by farmers' co-operatives.

The numbers are huge and the sugar mills expect political leaders to rake up the issue in a big way in the next few days to derive political mileage.

Stung by low sugar prices (Rs 12.50 a kg), huge payment arrears to farmers (over Rs 1,400 crore) and high state-advised prices (Rs 125-130 a quintal), the private mills in the state have refused to start crushing. (Some co-operative and state-owned mills have started operations.) "At this price, the loss for the efficient mills will be Rs 5 a kg, while it could be as high as Rs 7 a kg for the inefficient mills," said an industry source.

The mills were expecting the Mayawati government to lower the state-advised price this season. But she kept it at last year's level.

The mills have since moved the Allahabad High Court saying the state government needs to explain how it has fixed the price, which is substantially higher than the statutory minimum price of Rs 81.18 a quintal fixed by the Committee on Agricultural Costs and Prices at the Centre.

The state government, on its part, says the Supreme Court has recognised the state's power to fix sugarcane prices. Privately, bureaucrats admit that any reduction in the state-advised prices could have adverse political consequences for Mayawati and her government.

Some mills are known to have offered to buy at the statutory minimum price, but in vain. They cite the example of Maharashtra, where farmers are paid the statutory minimum price and yet crushing is in full swing.

Amid this confusion, sugar mills expect the acreage under sugarcane to shrink drastically next year. That could help sugar prices firm up.