Falling sugar prices and subsidies to farmers have sweetened the prospects of the industry. Bloomberg TV India caught up with Rajshree Pathy, Chairman and Managing Director of Rajshree Sugars, to discuss the problems faced by the beleaguered sector.

You were sort of thrown into the business due to circumstances. How did things work out?

You know, I didn’t doubt myself because I set myself this goal to achieve and to prove a point. Perhaps at that point, I was very young and my family has never been in the sugar business.

I didn’t inherit a sugar business contrary to public opinion. My father (industrialist G Varadaraj of the PSG Group) was asked to build it by the State government at that point.

He wasn’t even interested?

No, he wasn’t. He died in a freaky accident in Europe and I was actually building the factory for him because he was a member of the Rajya Sabha. He was busy in many other philanthropic trusts the family ran. We were only two daughters and I don’t think he really was a true businessman in that sense. He got his daughters married off. He wanted to do larger things for the society.

So, when he was actually asked to build a sugar factory, I was the one who stepped in and said that I will do it. He laughed at me and said, “What do you know about it? We are a family who for generations are in the cotton textile industry in Coimbatore.”

But I love the industry. I really love it because for me working there, transforming and seeing the palpable qualitative change in the lives of the farming communities — with each of the four factories, we support 30,000 farmers — and the multiplier effect in that kind of prosperity, that is mine.

Initially you did have pressure to let go but even said in public…and you were considered a bit arrogant I think, for having done that.

For me it was about getting there and nothing else mattered. I think the only way for women to actually come out on top away from all the negativities is to really prove that you can deliver.

And it doesn’t matter if you are a man or a woman because the balance sheet is gender insensitive. So it really does not matter at that level because none of us get subsidies or the incentives of woman entrepreneurs.

So this is a very interesting situation in India — the way that women are viewed is what I call it, what I coined it, the “Shakti Syndrome”. Shakti standing for the power of the women and the Indian male has always worshipped the Mother Goddess.

And when a woman actually crosses the barrier of equality into positions of authority, then the male society really respects her and I saw that transition in my own life.

Sugar, as an industry, has been going through a lot of pain. There have been price fluctuations and debt pile up. Now, the prices seem to have eased a bit. Where do you see the industry at this stage?

Well, the industry has been going through such a critical period over the last four years and the last year has been extremely difficult. There were a lot of questions on the survival of the industry.

However, with a lot of representations to the government, even meeting the PM, we found that this government has been far more receptive and has responded by giving a direct subsidy to farmers for the cane price.

They have given an export incentive.

And, finally, I think there is hope. However, there are lots of reforms that need to be done in the sugar industry. These are all short-term measures and this is the problem with policies in India regarding the sugar industry. When we are really in deep crisis and there is ₹33,000 crore of debt and so on to the farmers, suddenly the government has a kneejerk reaction. There is a shortfall in policy measures.

We have to think of the long-term well-being of not only the industry but of our farmers. The malice in the industry is that there is no protection to the farmers like minimum support price (MSP). The industry has been subsidising the farmers for decades. And that is killing the industry.

The government expects some price for sugarcane farmers. That price is a welfare price because it has no relationship with the price of sugar in the market and the global price.

So it is not a viable price and needs to be addressed.

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