'Shetkari Sanghatana: Vichar Aani Karyapadthdti' by Sharad Joshi

Summary

This Marathi-language book, ‘Shetkari Sanghatana: Vichar Ani Karyapaddhati’ (Shetkari Sanghatana: Thought and Method) by Sharad Joshi, is the canonical statement of the ideology and organisational method of the Shetkari Sanghatana, the farmers’ movement Joshi launched in Maharashtra in the late 1970s. The text originated as a recorded training-shibir (cadre camp) held at Ambajogai (Beed district) on 26-27 February 1981, transcribed by Professors Sureshchandra Mhatre and Suresh Ghate and first published in November 1982 by Janashakti Vachak Chalaval, Aurangabad; the edition in hand is the second edition, released in November 2008 to coincide with the Sanghatana’s 11th joint convention at Aurangabad. The book is dedicated to the martyrs (hutatme) of the farmers’ agitation.

Joshi’s central argument is that the poverty of India is rooted in the systematic squeezing of the cultivator. The fundamental demand of the Sanghatana is a remunerative price for agricultural produce (‘shetimalala rast bhav’) that fully covers the cost of production — and this single-point programme, he argues, is the only durable route to removing rural and urban destitution alike, since the urban poor are largely refugees from a collapsing dryland (jirayat) countryside. The chapters develop the framework systematically: the ultimate aim of the farmers’ movement; the true cost of agricultural production; agriculture as a victim of both ‘asmani’ (natural) and ‘sultani’ (state-inflicted) calamity; the famous ‘India versus Bharat’ formulation in which an urban, industrial ‘India’ lives off the extraction of a rural ‘Bharat’; the anti-Bharat bias of prevailing industrial policy; the question of class conflict within Bharat; a five-point charter (‘panchsheel’) on India’s exploitation of Bharat; and operational chapters on the Sanghatana’s demands, present form, agitation technique, and the dependence of Indian agriculture.

Joshi narrates the movement’s origins — the Chakan onion agitation of late 1980, the Nipani tobacco satyagraha of March 1981 in which forty thousand farmers blockaded the Pune-Bangalore highway for twenty-three days, the Nashik sugarcane stir of September 1981, and the first convention at Satana in January 1982 attended by thirty thousand self-financed farmers — and places these in a longer lineage running from Tantya Bhil, Vasudev Balwant Phadke and Jotirao Phule. The work is a foundational document of post-Independence Indian economic liberalism as articulated from the farm side: it attacks state procurement, price controls, the cooperative bureaucracy, and the urban-biased development model as a continuation of colonial extraction.

Key points

• The book is the transcribed text of a two-day cadre training shibir held by Sharad Joshi at Ambajogai on 26-27 February 1981, edited by Sureshchandra Mhatre and Suresh Ghate and first published in November 1982.
• Joshi argues that the root of Indian poverty - both rural destitution and urban slum life - lies in unremunerative prices for agricultural produce, and that ‘shetimalala rast bhav’ (a fair price covering full cost of production) is the Sanghatana’s single-point programme.
• The work introduces the ‘India versus Bharat’ framework, in which an urban industrial ‘India’ systematically extracts surplus from a rural ‘Bharat’ through controlled prices, procurement, and an anti-agriculture industrial policy.
• Agriculture suffers two parallel calamities, the author insists: ‘asmani’ (sky-sent / natural) and ‘sultani’ (the king’s, i.e. state-inflicted), with the second now larger than the first.
• Joshi catalogues the true costs of farming - seed, fertiliser, pesticide, irrigation, bullock and implement depreciation, interest on land at 10 percent of market value, family labour - that the Krishi Mulya Ayog (Agricultural Prices Commission) has ignored for fifteen years.
• He situates the Shetkari Sanghatana in a lineage of agrarian revolt running from the 1857 post-Independence-war peasant uprisings, Tantya Bhil, Vasudev Balwant Phadke, Jotirao Phule, the 1875 Sasvad-Ahmednagar moneylender riots, and the Mulshi dam agitation.
• Concrete agitations narrated include the Chakan onion stir (November 1980), the Nipani tobacco satyagraha against private traders’ price-rigging (March-April 1981, 23-day blockade of the Pune-Bangalore highway by 40,000 farmers, 12 killed at ‘Andolan Nagri’), the Nashik sugarcane agitation of September 1981, and the first convention at Satana in January 1982.
• Joshi rejects caste, religion and party divisions within the peasantry as obstacles to organisation, and insists the movement must build people up (‘mansa baandhayachi aahet, todayachi naahit’) rather than tear opponents down.
• The second edition (November 2008) was reissued by Shrikant Anant Umrikar of Janashakti Vachak Chalaval at Aurangabad to mark the Sanghatana’s 11th joint convention, with the original 1982 text preserved unchanged and an appendix on ‘Bharatiya Sheticha Paradhinata’ (The Subjection of Indian Agriculture) added.