Instant ‘gate-cane’ weddings in parched Marathwada supply desperate labour to sugar industry

On a spur road of India’s National Highway 48, a row of tractors stood in front of the Kille Dharur bus depot. Each tractor hauled trailers loaded with pots and pans, firewood, stacks of metal boxes, cots, motorbikes, and even scrawny goats.

In the first trailer sat five married couples. Among them was Sonal Pawar, 19, nursing her infant. Her newlywed sister Kajal, who looked about 15, unwrapped the lunch packets. The reddish-brown dye of the wedding henna was still faintly visible on her palms; she’d been married for six days.

“You can call it a gate-cane,” said Sonal, describing her sister’s wedding that, like her own, was arranged and solemnised in less than 30 hours. The wedding culminated in the packed trailer that transported the married couples from their village in Maharashtra’s historically drought-affected Marathwada region to Solapur in the lush western sugar belt. It would be their marital home and worksite for the next six months.

“Gate-cane”– loaned from the English words “gate” and “sugarcane” – is a term used colloquially in the water-starved villages of Marathwada that rely heavily on annual cycles of sugarcane labour migration. In commonplace vocabulary and practice, the term “gate-cane” refers to “shortcut” weddings fixed following the peak drought...

Read more