Sugar Workers: Round Two GO THE proposed strike of 250,000 workers in the sugar industry in Maharashtra ended with a whimper when the union representatives accepted a pro-management award by the Chief Minister on November 27 (see EPW, December 1 and 15, 1979). But even as this was happening another chapter in the multilateral confrontation among rich farmers, poor peasants, workers, industrialists and the government was opening up in Kolhapur, an important sugar- based political centre of western Maharashtra.