particular farm. He immediately paid the price the farmer had asked for and signed the purchase agreement. This was on 1 January 1977. Total land was about twenty three and a half acres (nine and a half hectares). It was not easy for a non-farmer to buy farmland but somehow through a friend Joshi found a legal way of buying it. Joshi named that place as Angarmala, a field of cinders; a word he coined from a well-known poem by Kusumagraj. Considering Joshi’s further steps in life from that place, the title seemed appropriate. Chakan lies in Khed taluka which is on the border of Pune and Raigad districts of Maharashtra. Chakan is the entry point for a region called bara maval from where Shivaji Maharaj started his struggle to establish his kingdom. Farmers there lived a life of extreme poverty. Throughout history wars were continuously waged here. Sometimes Mughals from Delhi were the aggressors, sometimes sardars of Adilshaha of Bijapur; sometimes soldiers of Siddhi Johar or sometimes petty raids by robbers. But whoever the aggressor, it was the local farmers who were the worst sufferers. Their ready crops were plundered, homes burnt to ashes. All their farm equipment, animals, water arrangement, seeds; everything was destroyed or looted. The farmer was compelled to start from zero. But even then there was never any assurance that what he built anew would stay with him. Under that shadow of constant insecurity, there was never any inclination left to create wealth, to build something. They became fatalistic and somehow just lived for the day. This had been happening for generations and the mentality of the farmers was a cumulative outcome of that life of devastation. Bhama is the main river of the region. If Chakan is considered as one end, then Vandre is another end of a stretch of 64 kilometers which is called valley of Bhamnahar. Ambethan lies on this Vandre-Chakan road. In that mountainous 76
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Sharad Joshi : Leading Farmers to the Centre Stage
