Farmers' protest, sugarcane price, diesel rates, stray cattle menace bigger issues for many in India's 'Sugar Bowl'

Emergence of Naresh and Rakesh Tikait may have brought Western Uttar Pradesh to the centre of farmers’ protest at Delhi borders, but the farming community of the region known as the ’sugar bowl of India’ have a long list of other and even bigger problems — Stagnant sugarcane price, ever-rising diesel rates and the menace of stray animals, to name a few. At the same time, ever-changing caste and societal equations are making the landscape much more difficult to predict in this politically-important region, which many political pundits believe would play a key role in the assembly elections next year and in the Lok Sabha polls of 2024.Raj Kumar, a Rawa Rajput from Satheri village in Muzaffarnagar district, says sugarcane prices have not been raised for the past several seasons, whereas companies have reduced the size of urea and DAP (Diammonium phosphate, a popular phosphatic fertiliser) bags, making the manure costlier and the agriculture ”unsustainable”. ”In this region, our ...