working in tobacco wakhars and couple of thousand tobacco farmers as well. Joshi’s speech was very well received. He made his usual points about how farmers in India had been exploited all those years and why it was essential that they got fair price for their produce if they had to come out of their ditch of poverty. Joshi gave due importance to Subhash Joshi in his speech since he had observed that Subhash Joshi was quite respected in Nipani and he did not want people to think that he was taking leadership in his hands by usurping Subhash Joshi. But the response to his speech had more or less confirmed Sharad Joshi’s leadership of the forthcoming struggle. Fortunately, Subhash Joshi also regarded Sharad Joshi as his elder brother. Sharad Joshi spent next several days in Subhash Joshi’s home and the two became close to each other. They together addressed innumerable meetings to prepare the farmers for a larger struggle. In Chikodi taluka itself they addressed 51 meetings apart from the ones they organized in Hukkeri and Gokak. As was his normal practice before launch of the struggle, Joshi interviewed a large number of farmers and studied the problems of tobacco growers in depth. He realized that Chikodi taluka itself had about 60,000 acres under tobacco cultivation and 95% of the holdings were of less than five acres each. In other words 95% were small farmers. The impression many people had that tobacco growers were wealthy was obviously wrong. When Joshi worked out the costs he discovered that the average yield per acre was 270 kilos and costed Rs. 3080 to grow it. It meant that to grow one kilo of tobacco, farmer was spending Rs. 11.40 and for that he was getting paid the average rate of Rs. 6.50 per kilo. His net loss of Rs. 4.90 per kilo. No wonder the tobacco grower was perpetually in debt. From one kilo of tobacco about 5000 bidis used to be produced. On every thousand bidis, excise duty was one rupee. In other words, out of one kilo of tobacco government was Smouldering Tobacco in Nipani
Q
141
