A sensible water-usage policy, of course, needs to be reinforced by a sensible crop-pricing policy since, if the incentives for growing water-intensive crops are very high, farmers will find ways to bypass the system. Sugar pricing, however, is quite irrational and, as compared to the central government’s plan to fix support prices for most crops at 1.5 times the A2+FL costs, cane is priced at two times the cost. In Maharashtra, where most of the water is used up by sugarcane, farmers make Rs 4,954 per hectare per month (C2 costs) versus just Rs 737 for cotton and Rs 173 for wheat. While it is to be hoped the central government will work on fixing this distortion, Maharashtra has made a good beginning in trying to fix—assuming the policy is accepted and implemented well—what is under its control.