power and muscle power had gained so much importance in the political power game that solving of people’s genuine problems was no longer the preferred path to popularity. Society itself was changing rapidly. India of nineties was not same as the seventies' India which Joshi had seen when he returned from Switzerland. TV had penetrated even rural households. So had education. Even in remote villages some level of prosperity was seeping in. According to a study done by a well-known institution of Ahmedabad, rural India accounted for almost forty percent of the demand for consumer goods ranging from toothpaste and soap to footwear and cold drinks. Earlier the percentage was less than half of that. Children from many farming households had found some job elsewhere; many had started some side-business. After nationalization public sector banks began to span the entire rural area. Under their various schemes loan was available for small scale sector. Even in small towns one could see the offices of share brokers. A starving farmer was ready to bear any hardships of struggle, but once he tasted some fruits of prosperity and settled life, he was unwilling to risk that. Even at the ideological level, Joshi always had maintained that his ideas would be valid for a limited period of five-six years. To demand fair price from Government was like a saline given to a very weak patient; that could not be a long-term arrangement. Government intervention was like calling for firebrigade but eventually farmers would have to go by the laws of the market and produce only that crop and only in that quantity for which the market existed. ‘Don’t expect the government to buy whatever you produce and pay you the rate you want,’ he used to tell his followers. ‘You must innovate, get into processing, add value to your products, and learn the technique of marketing’, he said a number of times. He believed that needs of the society kept evolving and the Search for New Ways
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