The government is staring at a sweetener crisis as sugar production surges, prices crash across states and sugarcane arrears owed to farmers climb past Rs 19,000 crore. Amid the sugar industry’s demand for speedy intervention to tide over the crisis, including subsidy for export of sugar or bulk buying by the government so that a price correction takes place in the domestic market, an emergency meeting by a group of ministers is scheduled to be held next week to find a way out. Sugarcane arrears have been a politically volatile issue, particularly in Uttar Pradesh and Maharashtra, the two states which send about one-fourth of MPs to the Lok Sabha.