If not bundles of chopped cane laid out on heaving bullock carts, then on full-blown trucks that look like they are carrying a hell of a lot of fat hay from the distance. I even saw piled-up sand being carried – except it was not sand, but processed gur (jaggery) – on beds of trucks. And that’s not even counting the sugar that comes out of the mills from this part of the country and into our homes.

But sitting at a tea stall next to the Public Inter College at Kairana in Shamli district, I see gleaming New Holland tractors each with two giant empty trays putter by one by one.

“That has to be at least 400 quintals (40,000 kg) each tractor,” pipes up Rishi Pal, whom I assume to be a cane farmer, but am told by the man sitting next to him that he’s a ‘mistri’, but “he knows enough farmers here to be right”.

Those empty tractors, I am told now by the expert panel sitting at the tea stall, are all from across the UP-Haryana border and are returning to Panipat after selling their cane to mills here in UP. “Their cane has far less sugar than UP sugarcanes,” Pal reminds us. And, perhaps more importantly for the non-gourmand, the Haryanvi cane is sold at a cheaper price to the mills in this area than the ‘local’ western UP variety.

SUGAR FOR THEIR SUGAR
Akram Akhtar, in his grey sweater, jeans and sport shows, looks more like a Delhi student union leader than a social activist working with agricultural labourers and brick kiln workers. His Afkar Foundation has also helped in rehabilitating victims of the 2013 Muzaffarnagar riots. “I am also a farmer,” he tells me, with the confidence of a non-theorist. Lighting up another cigarette, he explains to me sugarcaneconomics.

“Farmers are not bound to sell their cane to a particular mill. They are free to sell it to anyone.

But mills do have their own farmers with their captive output. They are usually paid Rs 315 per quintal. ‘Outside’ farmers are paid Rs 350 and paid by cheque.”

Now comes the tricky part. As a farmer, one has a basic quota of 800 quintals of cane one can sell to local mills. “My basic quota will decrease if I am bound to a local mill.” Thus, the need to sell ‘outside’.

Mill-owners release payments in installments. All sugar mills in western UP shut in mid-April and reopen in November for the next season. “Last year’s (November 2015) payment was released in February 2016.

But after demonetisation on November 8, payments have been increasingly delayed,” says Akhtar. Agricultural labourers, lying at the bottom of the sugareconomic pyramid have been worst hit. And with cash less in the air, cheque payments have their unique problems outside yet-to-be-plastic rural UP.

“A worker may have a bank account under the name of Vinod. But he gets a cheque written out to Kallu, the name by which he is known by everyone.” Then there are bank tellers who have a knack of finding some problem or another with a cheque. Vinod-Kallu, not being Raghuram Rajan, is left to run from pillar to post to sugarcane.

FOR A FISTFUL OF RUPEES
But my education in sugarcaneconomics took a tractor-dent when I asked a farmer clipclopping down the Grand Trunk Road on his cart bursting with sugarcane, “Yeh aakh apka khet se hain?” On getting no response, I repeated my question. He looked down from his perch as he approached me slowly like Clint Eastwood on a bullock.

I was told quickly that the Hindi word for sugarcane was not the same as the Bengali one, it was ‘gunna’. “Sorry, yeh gunna apka khet se hain?” I asked again as he was passing me. His perplexed face gave way to a quiet nod. The jew’s harp-and-whistle tune from the spaghetti western UP classic, For a Few Rupees, was left ringing in my ears.

Downplaying issues, Mayawati may have failed to win over Muslim voters

That Aligarh Muslim University (AMU) has one of the country’s most beautiful campuses was almost proved by the fact that I was late for my meetings there.

Walking down those broad and clean streets with either side lined by white sunlight-bouncing buildings and grass and flowers everywhere showed me the alternative to those campuses-dressed-up-as-playschools in places like Bengaluru and Palo Alto. But I have wasted one university life. I was not going to waste university appointments.

Aligarh had already voted on February 11, with the assembly constituency of Koil (in which AMU falls under) having the curious case of the Congress candidate Vivek Bansal fighting it out with the Samajwadi Party’s Ajju Ishak, even as Rahul Gandhi and Akhilesh Yadav continue to love each other on Valentine’s Day. I meet the ever-smiling Enayetullah Khan, a research assistant in the department of history.

I was supposed to meet him inside the Maulana Azad Library, but it’s in the glorious sunshine outside the arts faculty building that I am introduced to Prof Mohammad Sajjad of the Centre of Advanced Study in History.

I ask the obvious question one can ask in Aligarh two days before Phase 2 polls: Will Mayawati get some of the Muslim votes that she has been making an extra effortt to win? Sajjad starts by saying that most Muslims will vote for the SP-Congress hand-cycle. “But had she really made an extra effort to win over the Muslims, she would have spoken out loudly on the issue of Muzaffarnagar.

Not only the riots, but also about the displaced people who have been living in abject conditions. So except for ticket distribution, how do you say that she has made an extra effort?.”

Sajjad then proceeds to talk about something that has been, according to him, “under-reported by the media”: her style of functioning with regard to the BSP’s ‘Dalit-Muslim unity’ effort.

“You see,” says Sajjad, pulling up his black and white sweater sleeves, “the historically oppressed sections of Muslims, the pasmanda – pasmanda activists and intellectuals have been working hard for Dalit Muslims for a while. In fact, some say the Muzaffarnagar riots were an effect rather than a cause of the Pasmanda Kranti Abiyan that was already underway in July 2013 before the September riots.

Prof Syed Ali Nadeem Rezavi of the history department, whom I meet next, is much more sceptical about anything that goes under the name of ‘Muslim vote’.

“It’s a fight for haves and have-nots, and many Muslims happen to fall under the category of have-nots along with many other have not communities. This sudden support from maulvis and imams for Mayawati doesn’t mean anything anymore.

These are discredited forces who only some uneducated Muslims may listen to. But their stamp of approval hardly matters any more,” says Rezavi, who seems to take secularism far more seriously than UP’s ‘secular’ parties. “What makes anyone think a Muslim will vote for only a Muslim candidate?” he says with agitated seriousness.

Talking heads are usually jammed inside a television screen. As a print journalist who abhors studios, I prefer hopping from one room to another.

In a room not far from Prof Rezavi’s sits just-promoted-to-Associate Professor, Department of Political Science, Mohammad Mohibul Haque. He tells me about the ability of the All India Majlis-e-Ittehad-ul-Muslimeen (AIMIM) to play spoilsport – for both BSP and SP-Congress – in at least 20-25 seats. “And people have already asked, ‘And what if Mayawati gets the numbers but falls short and ties up with the BJP?”
In another room, with past AMU worthies staring down at me from framed black-andwhite framed portraits, Prof Mirza Aslam Beg, Chairman, Department of Political Science, thinks that Mayawati’s ‘Muslim-Dalit’ strategy “looks good on paper but is too simplistic”.

Behind his chairman’s table, Beg says, “Her Kanshi Ram Awaas Yojna for housing for the economically depressed was impressive and an example of real social welfare. But that hasn’t benefited her politically among Muslims even if it should have. It is time for UP to shift from identity politics to real politics.” It’s for Aftab Alam, Assistant Professor, Political Science, do give me a dose of realpolitik.

“You have to understand that there is a class factor playing. Poor Dalits and Muslims, whose voice the media is not capturing, are gravitating towards the BSP. Better-off Muslims are showcasing their support for the SP-Congress. Mayawati is the dark horse this election.”

WINTER IS NOT COMING
And if there is a dark horse, there is always a wild card. Which comes in the form of Dr Shakeel Samdani, Professor, Faculty of Law.

“Yes, it doesn’t mean much for these Imams and maulvis and to lend support to Mayawati. They will hardly get her more votes. But what you must understand is that their support is a sign of the way the wind is blowing.

There is a reason why these characters are now being vocal about her. Hawa ulte bane (The wind has, in turn, changed things.)