Sugar co-operatives in Latur district of Maharashtra, now in the grip of a severe water shortage, are struggling to device ways to get water to run sugar factories. Their efforts may not succeed, at least this summer, for the simple reason that the scanty water will be first utilized the scanty water will be first utilized for drinking purposes. But at least one sugar mill in the private sector, Natural Sugar and Allied Industries (NSAI), Ranjani, under the leadership of its president B B Thombe, has shown successfully how water retained from sugar juice can be retained to run a sugar factory without depending on outside sources. The experiment is likely to transform the structure of the sugar industry in the sugar industry in the state and elsewhere in the country where water shortage is a perennial problem.