Joshi heartily laughed but the words remained etched in his memory and he often quoted them in meetings. The trio began addressing farmers’ meetings. Not only did they traverse entire Nashik district addressing eight to ten meetings a day, they also addressed several meetings in adjoining Dhule and Ahmednagar districts. The struggle spread from village to village. One important person to join them wholeheartedly was a leading farmer from Baglaan, Ramchandra Bapu Patil, who remained very active with the farmers’ movement in subsequent years. Most importantly, Madhavrao Boraste, Chairman of the Nifad Factory also took a public stand supporting SS. In the beginning he was not in favour of SS and had in fact opposed their entry in his area. He had scolded Nirgude who worked as his employee for bringing that outside element in Nifad. Perhaps it was More who convinced him. The personal meeting with Joshi in the factory on 15 April also might have played a part. Joshi in his public meeting that day had explained how the actual cost of growing sugarcane was much higher than what they received for it from the factory and he had also explained how the cost of converting that sugarcane into sugar was worked out against the interest of the farmers. After Joshi left Chairman Boraste carefully worked out the costs himself and was convinced that what Joshi had said was true. With his support, the public meeting of 15 August turned out to be a real hit. All present decided that they would not sell onion or sugarcane for less than the proper cost of production as worked out by SS which was Rs. 100 per quintal for onion and Rs. 300 per ton for sugarcane. “No onion under 100, No sugarcane under 300” was the loud shout when meeting ended. That slogan was used in every rally and procession. The farmers’ struggle Joshi started with onion had now expanded to another, much stronger, crop. 122
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Sharad Joshi : Leading Farmers to the Centre Stage
