his report which he had submitted a month earlier in July. In the wake of sudden stormy political developments in Delhi, Singh himself had to step down as Prime Minister in early November. On the whole, Joshi regarded the entire exercise of SAC as waste of his time and energy. Having waited in vain for some formal government response to his report for over six months, Joshi decided to publish it himself. It was done on 25 January 1991 as a small 50-page booklet. It contained the gist of his thinking about what ails Indian agriculture and suggested some ways out. In his foreword Joshi had written, ‘SAC considers it is time that its comments are made available to the public at large so that the debate of the policy may at least be well-informed.’ It is a valuable document for anyone interested in studying Indian agriculture.
In his attempts to move beyond Maharashtra and onto the national scene Joshi had also done some work in Gujarat. In fact except for Punjab in no other State did he involve himself as much as he did in Gujarat. The link probably started as early as 1980, when Joshi’s work started. After hearing about it, Bipin Desai and Gunwant Desai, two farmers from Gujarat specially came to Ambethan to meet Joshi. Both lived in Surat and were staunch Gandhians. They shared a unique kind of a relationship. Though not related biologically, they were closer to each other than twins. They did their farming together, lived in the same house with their families and in fact had the same bank account. Their exceptional friendship was talk of the town in Surat, Navsari, Bharuch, Bardoli and that entire south Gujarat region. Bipinbhai was the President of Gujarat Khedut (farmers in Gujarati) Samaj for several years. He was also the vice-chancellor of a University. Both are no longer alive but Gunwantbhai’s only Farmers on the National Agenda
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