drain out their energy in fighting prolonged legal battles. Of course Joshi knew it well and was mentally prepared for all that. As a next step, SS decided to gherao (surround) Chief Minister’s official residence in Mumbai at Malabar Hill on 15 February 1987. Twenty to twenty five thousand farmers reached Bombay and camped at Girgaon chowpaty, at the foot of Malabar Hill. Chief Minister Shankarrao Chavan sent one of his ministers as his representative and invited the SS delegation for talks. Sharad Joshi, Bhaskarrao Borawake, Anil Gote and Ramchandrabapu Patil went and had talks with the Chief Minister. The negotiations continued till late at night. They ended with agreement on three points: 1. Government will pay for the cotton at the rate higher than in the previous year, 2. State Government and SS will jointly talk with the Central Government to promote export of cotton and resolve other matters under the Central command, and, 3. Representatives of the SS would be included in the team that supervised the sale of cotton under Monopoly Scheme. That agreement was signed and thus ended the current phase of the agitation which had started on 18 October 1984 with that first Kapas Kisan Sammelan at Hinganghat. Of course no farmers’ struggle could end at any one point because new issues or different angles of the old issues kept cropping up. After seven years, a new struggle started for the cotton growers on 14 December 1995 when they revolted against the zone-bandi that is restriction on selling cotton outside the State. Like sugarcane even cotton suffered from this zone-bandi. In practice, many farmers did not adhere to this regulation. Police would be guarding the borders between different States and if they were paid a fixed amount per truck as a bribe, the truck would be allowed to pass When White Gold Turned Red
Q
167
