With the sugarcane harvest season coming to an end, seasonal migrant workers from the drought-hit Marathwada region, who spend months toiling in the sugarcane fields of western Maharashtra and neighbouring Karnataka, are back home, but hold little hope that the outcome of the ongoing Lok Sabha poll will bring any change to their ‘bitter’ plight.
Every year, about 12 lakh to 15 lakh residents of Beed, Jalna, Parbhani, Latur, Nanded, Hingoli, Dharashiv (previously Osmanabad), and Chhatrapati Sambhaji Nagar (previously Aurangabad) districts in the Marathwada region migrate to the sugar belt — Sangli, Kolhapur, Pune, Satara, Solapur, and Ahmednagar — driven by scant job opportunities in their villages and nearby towns.
The villagers leave in tolis, groups of workers, during the harvest season, which typically spans from October to March-April, and stay either on the sugar factory premises or in the fields. A migrant couple, called a koyta (sickle), earns between ₹300 and ₹500 a day. Once they return home, the men work as masons or cleaners, while women work as domestic help.
