indebtedness. It was an issue on which all farmers’ leaders agreed. It was almost impossible to find a farmer anywhere in the country who was not indebted to some bank or lender. As was his usual practice, Joshi spent a lot of time in studing that issue. That provided strong logical basis to his struggle. Joshi realized that the policy of the earlier British government was more just to the farmers. Way back in 1918 British government in India had passed Usurious Loans Act. Usurious implied the loan on which extortionist interest was charged. The first clause of this Act was that a farmer could not be charged interest at the rate higher than five and a half percent per annum. As against that, even the cooperative banks, ostensibly formed for the benefit of the farmers, were routinely charging twelve, fourteen or even sixteen percent interest. The next provision of the Act was to prevent charging compounding rate of interest on the loan given to farmers. Otherwise, compounding interest when added to the original loan amount often used to be much bigger than the original loan. Another point Joshi realized was that the Contracts Act was applicable to the transaction of taking loan. As a part of that Act, if any one side did something that made it impossible for the other side to hounour that Contract, the said Contract became null and void. While the loan was taken by the farmers from the institutions owned or approved by the Government, the Government itself had taken various steps that made the repayment of that loan impossible for the farmers. Hence that loan had become illegal. Still, various Governments over the years had announced waving off certain percentage of farmers’ loan and always flaunted it as some kind of benevolence. Joshi’s argument in nutshell was as follows : “Government deliberately gave so less a price to the farm produce that it did not cover the cost of production and thereby compelled the farmer to take loan. Naturally, all such loans are Farmers on the National Agenda
Q
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