Payment of Cane Price by Maharashtra's Sugar Co-operatives' Ignatius Chithelen A non-Brahman rich peasant elite, engaged in sugarcane cultivation for about half a century, had by the 1950s established a powerful position for themselves in the socio-political and economic life of Maharashtra. This power, which they continue to wield, has its chief economic base in sugar, ie, both cultivation of sugarcane and its processing.