was no common language to conduct the meeting. Many farmers’ leaders were not fluent in Hindi or English and could express themselves effectively only in their mother tongue. Several local issues based on caste, religion or region dominated their views. Tamil Nadu and Karnataka were divided over waters of Kaveri river, whereas Andhra Pradesh and Maharashtra were divided over sharing of Krishna water. Punjab and Haryana were bitter towards each other over the issue of Sutlej. Then there were border issues between the States. Local politics affected them considerably. The level of overall development in different States was also vastly different which affected the nature of their grievances. Ideologically also they differed. Most of them believed in Socialist policies and very few like Bhupinder Singh Mann of Punjab or Hemant Kumar Panchal of Karnataka supported Joshi in his liberal views. Joshi always insisted on his one-point programme of “securing remunerative price for farm produce” while others always focused on getting more and more subsidies from the government on farm input like diesel, power, tractors, fertilizers, pesticides etc. Most leaders were also opposed to genetically modified seeds and most such high-tech developments. Realizing these difficulties, later on Joshi shifted his efforts of forming one national organization to forming a coordination committee of different famers’ organizations. As a first step in that direction, he called a meeting at Wardha on 30 and 31 October 1982. Leaders from fourteen States attended. Interstate Coordination Committee (ICC) for farmers was formed in that meeting. The same ICC was later expanded and converted into Kisan Coordination Committee (KCC). Unfortunately, a major personal tragedy struck Joshi while that meeting was going on. The news reached him at eleven in the morning that his wife Leela had passed away in Pune. She Farmers on the National Agenda
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