In his efforts to make some headway in politics Joshi befriended different individuals and parties at different times – sometimes Sharad Pawar, sometimes V. P. Singh or sometimes BJP. But somehow no alliance clicked. Neither he as an individual nor SS as an organization gained anything from it. The cotton growing areas of Marathwada and Vidarbha, where he had maximum following, were also not with him when it came to elections. In those two regions the hold of the Congress party was considerably weakened because of SS agitations but the electoral advantage of the vacuum it created was taken by Shiv Sena, which was powerful in Mumbai and Thane but had no hold in those regions. While Shiv Sena had only one MLA winning in the 1985 Assembly elections, the number of its MLAs swelled to 52 in 1990 election and 73 in 1995 election – the year when Shiv Sena allied with BJP and came to power. That growth had largely been in Vidarbha and Marathwada, where SS had received maximum support in its agitations. It seems that farmers preferred Joshi when it came to agitations, but preferred other politicians when it came to elections. During his various political moves Joshi was inconsistent in his approach but he never compromised on his basic ideas. For instance, even when he was friendly with some BJP leaders like Vajpayee and Advani, he was strongly opposed to the BJP policy of banning cow slaughter. He bluntly wrote, ‘It is unviable for any farmer to keep feeding a cow that has stopped giving milk. The responsibility of feeding a cow till she dies will eat away the farmer himself. Such impractical laws will make a farmer stop owning cows. In that sense, it will amount to cow slaughter.’ Nor was he ever supportive of BJP thinkers who maintained that indigenous cows gave highly nutritious milk while the milk given by hybrid cows like Jersey cows was harmful. Joshi, with his rational thinking and experience of living in a country like Switzerland, found such claims ridiculous. 258
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Sharad Joshi : Leading Farmers to the Centre Stage
