As the Maharashtra Navnirman Sena flexes its muscles both inside the Assembly and outside on the issue of outsiders and “Marathi pride”, farmers in the state are doing what they think is best for their business in these times of acute worker shortage.

With the grape-pruning season beginning in September, workers from Bihar are being welcomed with open arms into Pune vineyards. And that’s just the start. Like in the construction business in big cities like Mumbai, workers from Bihar are becoming the footsoldiers of agriculture across Maharashtra — starting with the vineyards.

Farmers say they are aware of the MNS threat, but politics should not be mixed with business. “I was approached by an MNS worker a few months ago. He wanted me to recruit local boys. So I said, ‘Find us local workers ready to work, bring them to us’. We can’t give up agriculture. We are facing acute shortage of good labour, so let the political parties not interfere in our work,” says Jitendra Bidwe, a grape grower with five acres of land, who has hired Pramod Kumar, from Supaul in Bihar, and his band of 10 workers this year.

Facing acute labour shortage, grape farmers based in Narayangaon, 80 km from Pune, turned in a big way to Bihar last year. Some circulated their phone numbers in villages, while others asked workers they knew to bring back others from their villages to Narayangaon in the forthcoming season.

In the past two months, it’s obvious that the effort has borne fruit, with the number of Bihari workers in Narayangaon multiplying many times over. Some farmers say hundreds of workers might be streaming in. “Last year they started trickling into farms in Ahmednagar and Nashik. Now workers are coming primarily to work in vineyards, but they are likely to be engaged for other crops too,” says Shriram Gadhave, president of a vegetable growers’ association, who is also a member of the Consortium of Indian Horticulture.

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