compilation of Joshi’s speeches during Ambajogai training programme. It is fair to say that this book was, and continued to remain for years to come, the Bhagwad Geeta of SS.
In this book, at the outset, Joshi briefly reviewed the farmers’ movements of the past and gave them due credit. Here one might mention a small book written by Charudatta Dabholkar, from the well-known Dabholkar family of Satara, titled ‘Famine in Maharashtra and how to overcome it’. He wrote it while he was studying in England in 1954 and it was published seven years later in 1961. Dabholkar had explained how, “the law of diminishing returns was playing havoc with agriculture, why a farmer produced just about enough to survive because he had realized that more he produced, more becomes his loss. If he is assured of fair prices for his produce, based on the actual cost of its production, he would certainly produce much more and that would end the famine in Maharashtra. The problem of famine is fundamentally not a technical one but an economic one.” This rhymed well with what Joshi was saying himself though he had not read that book earlier. Many years later, in 2005, Joshi again acknowledged in a letter written to Dr Dattaprasad Dabholkar, younger brother of Charudatta, ‘Shetkari Sanghatana believes that the farmer must get remunerative price for his produce and that is the only answer to the problem of our poverty. But the same thought was very scientifically expressed by your brother twenty five years before me.’ Joshi was intellectually honest and frank in not grabbing the entire credit for the success of onion and sugarcane struggle led by him. He acknowledged that the timing of the struggle and the situation prevailing in the country that time were also important reasons for success. He said, 176
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Sharad Joshi : Leading Farmers to the Centre Stage
