Maani:
My first love bloomed in a sugarcane field.
It happened during an NSS camp in Marayoor, a small town in Kerala surrounded by mountains, where a peaceful river quietly flows eastward. Marayoor is famous for its traditional jaggery and the rare sandalwood forests that have existed for centuries. For me, it became famous for something else: a love that remained one of life’s sweetest memories.
Whenever I thought about sugarcane afterwards, I remembered that place. I remembered walking through green fields, hearing the wind pass through the leaves, and seeing white sugarcane flowers dancing in the evening light. They always made me feel romantic. Film songs would automatically begin playing inside my head whenever I saw them.
Years later, I went to another sugarcane landscape, the vast cultivation belts of Ahmednagar, Beed and Latur in Maharashtra. As our vehicle entered the villages, I was still carrying the memories of Marayoor. I expected another landscape filled with sweetness. Instead, I entered a landscape built on exhaustion. The same sugarcane that once represented love now stood before me as one of India’s harshest labour realities.
The Sweetness We Consume Has Another Story
Sugar has always been presented as a symbol of celebration.
Festivals. Tea. Sweets.
But very few people ask who cuts the cane.
Every year, nearly 1.5 million seasonal labourers migrate from drought-prone districts of Maharashtra to harvest sugarcane. Entire families leave their villages because farming has become impossible after repeated droughts and uncertain rainfall. They spend almost six months living in temporary roadside shelters or makeshift huts near sugar factories, far away from schools, hospitals and public services.
Most workers are paid as couples rather than as individuals. Missing even one day of work often leads to wage deductions or debt. This system forces families to continue working regardless of illness, pregnancy or injury. Labour contractors control recruitment, advances and payments, leaving workers with very little bargaining power.
Climate Change Begins the Journey
The story of sugarcane labour actually begins long before the harvest. It begins with drought.
Large parts of Marathwada, especially Beed, experience recurring droughts, declining groundwater and increasingly unpredictable monsoons. Farming families often have no agricultural work for nearly eight months every year. Migration to sugarcane fields becomes less a choice than a survival strategy. Heatwaves reaching around 46°C, irregular rainfall and water scarcity have made agriculture even more uncertain. Ironically, sugarcane itself is a highly water-intensive crop. While villages struggle to access drinking water, vast quantities of water continue to support commercial sugar production. The contradiction becomes impossible to ignore. Climate change does not simply affect crops. It decides who migrates, who goes into debt, and who loses control over their own lives.
The Cost Paid by Women’s Bodies
The hardest truth hidden inside these fields is carried by women.
Women wake before sunrise to fetch water, cook food and care for children. They then spend long days cutting cane, lifting bundles weighing 20 to 40 kilograms, loading tractors and working continuously until late evening. After returning to temporary camps, domestic work begins again.
Their workday often stretches to 15–18 hours. There are usually no toilets. No childcare. No menstrual hygiene facilities. No maternity protection. No paid leave. Pain becomes part of the job.
One of the most disturbing consequences is the large number of hysterectomies, the surgical removal of the uterus, among women sugarcane workers. Investigations found unusually high rates in Maharashtra’s sugar belt. Activists say economic pressure, fear of losing work, misinformation, inadequate healthcare and harsh working conditions all contribute to women agreeing to these surgeries. Official surveys previously identified more than 13,000 hysterectomies among women sugarcane workers in Beed district over a decade, prompting public investigations and regulatory reforms. Recent reports indicate the issue remains a matter of concern despite new safeguards. Removing a woman’s uterus has, in many cases, become a way of adapting her body to an inhuman labour system instead of changing the system itself.
Children Grow Up in the Fields
Migration also reshapes childhood. When families leave their villages for harvesting season, children’s education is frequently interrupted.
Some accompany parents into the fields, while adolescent girls face pressure to leave school, marry early, or take on domestic responsibilities. Journalistic investigations have linked seasonal migration, poverty and insecure living conditions with higher risks of child marriage and educational disruption. The sugar harvest does not only produce sugar. It also reproduces inequality across generations.
Labour Without Rights
Behind every truckload of sugarcane are invisible workers whose rights remain weakly protected. Workers often live without safe housing, sanitation, clean drinking water or healthcare. Employment is seasonal, informal and largely mediated through contractors. Women face additional risks of sexual harassment, discrimination and unequal burdens of unpaid care work. Researchers and labour organisations have argued that these living and working conditions violate basic human rights.
Many workers know they are being exploited. But poverty leaves very few alternatives.
A Landscape I Can No Longer See the Same Way
When I photograph sugarcane today, I no longer see only green fields.
I see migration.
I see drought.
I see debt.
I see women carrying impossible loads.
I see children growing up between tractors instead of classrooms.
I see climate change quietly pushing people away from their own villages.
The white sugarcane flowers still bloom.
The wind still moves through them just as it did in Marayoor.
Movie songs still come to my mind.
But now another sound accompanies them: the sound of sickles striking cane before sunrise, tractors leaving villages filled with migrant workers, and women whose bodies have carried the hidden cost of our everyday sugar.
Sugar still tastes sweet. The lives behind it are not.
