well. Purchase of machinery, buying properties, giving contracts for labour or transport, providing employment and many such avenues became handy for making money. The class that controlled these sugar factories was also the class that controlled politics of the State. A lot of money spent by the government on development was often channelized through this class. Control of these factories was vital for controlling the politics, economy and social structure of the rural area. No wonder each political leader wished to have at least one cooperative sugar factory under his control. It was precisely this power centre that SS was now challenging. The farmers who had traditionally voted for the ruling Congress Party, were now turning to Joshi. In each speech Joshi was explaining how politicians had so far cheated the farmers and the farmers were getting convinced by his statistically backed and logically convincing arguments. He used to quote a note compiled by V. T. Krishnammachari, Deputy Chairman of Planning Commission, on 28 April 1956 which mentioned as one of the guiding principles that ‘Agriculture production should be increased by 40% and prices of agriculture produce should be reduced by 20%.’ Joshi would say in each meeting that in the draft of the fourth five-year plan it was mentioned as one of the guiding principles that ‘Prices of farm produce should not be decided by taking into consideration all the production costs.’ Agriculture Prices Commission set up by then Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri in 1965 decided the prices of farm produce and Joshi used to quote the following policy printed in their 1971 report which said, ‘It would be impractical to give to the farmers the prices that covered their entire cost of production. If one takes into account the cost of labour rendered by family members of the farmers, at the prevailing minimum wage rate, then the cost of farm produce will go up very high and we shall have to pay higher wages even to the workers in proportion with that.’ Bitter Story of Sugarcane
Q
125
