'Shetkari Sanghtana - Rajkiya Bhumika' by Ajit Narde

Summary

This Marathi-language booklet by Ajit Narde, published on 12 November 1994 by Shetkari Prakashan (Pune) as number 20 in its pamphlet series, traces the political trajectory of the Shetkari Sanghatana (Farmers’ Organization) from its origins as a movement in 1978 to the eve of its formal entry into electoral politics as the Swatantra Bharat Paksha. The work is presented as a study aid for activists, farmers, entrepreneurs, and intellectuals, distilling roughly fifteen years of the organization’s evolving stance toward state power and is appended with key resolutions adopted at its conventions and executive meetings. The publisher’s foreword by Sureshchandra Mhatre frames the booklet as essential reading for an organization now hunting for a fresh political alternative after concluding that every existing party — Congress, Janata, the Left, the Communists, BJP, even non-caste social-justice fronts — has betrayed cultivators on the question of remunerative prices and an open agricultural economy.

Narde, writing from Jaysingpur in Kolhapur district, narrates how Sharad Joshi launched the Sanghatana around the Chakan onion agitation in 1978, then expanded it across Maharashtra through agitations on sugarcane, tobacco, milk and cotton. He recounts the 1982 Vijayawada-and-Saswad debates where the movement formalized its diagnosis: the post-independence Nehruvian planning state, by suppressing farm prices to subsidize industrialization, was the structural cause of rural poverty. Government ‘interventions’ — price controls, export bans, fertilizer subsidies, loan waivers — are described as palliatives that disguise an extractive arrangement. The booklet recapitulates the Sanghatana’s parliamentary tactics through the 1984, 1989 and 1991 elections, its support to V. P. Singh on the Bofors-era anti-corruption plank and the Sangli kisan rally, its opposition to Mandal-and-Mandir communalism, and its lone public defense of the Dunkel draft and the GATT agreement against both Left and Sangh Parivar attacks.

The closing chapters argue that with the 1991 Narasimha Rao–Manmohan Singh liberalization, the Nehruvian model is exhausted but reform has stalled because organized labor, public-sector employees and protected industrialists are now demanding ‘level playing field’ shelter. The Sanghatana therefore concludes that a new political vehicle of open-economy supporters — farmers plus genuinely competitive entrepreneurs and traders — must be built; Minoo Masani’s appeal and the Bombay convention of open-economy advocates lead directly to Sharad Joshi accepting the presidency of the revived Swatantra Bharat Paksha, whose special founding session was to be held at Nagpur on 12 November 1994, the very day this pamphlet was released.

Key points

• Published 12 November 1994 by Shetkari Prakashan, Pune, to coincide with the Nagpur special convention at which Sharad Joshi formally accepted the presidency of the revived Swatantra Bharat Paksha.
• Dates the Shetkari Sanghatana’s birth to the 1978 Chakan onion agitation in Nashik district under Janata Party rule, and tracks its spread across Maharashtra through tobacco, sugarcane, milk and cotton agitations.
• Identifies the 1982 Saswad convention and the Vijayawada CPI(M) congress resolution as the moment the Sanghatana broke decisively from both Congress and the Marxist parties, which it accuses of treating farmers as ‘profiteering kulaks’.
• Argues that Nehruvian planning deliberately depressed agricultural prices to subsidize industry and that subsidies, loan waivers and export bans are extractive policies disguised as relief.
• Records the Sanghatana’s tactical voting history — support to opposition candidates in 1984/85, to the Janata Dal–V. P. Singh front on the Bofors plank in 1989, the Nanded Lok Sabha contest backing Prakash Ambedkar in 1987, and selective Congress support in 1991 to block communal candidates.
• Notes the November 1986 Chandvad Mahila Aghadi convention of about one lakh women, which resolved on one-hundred-percent women candidates in panchayat elections and on protests at the Prime Minister’s residence over atrocities on Delhi women after Indira Gandhi’s assassination.
• Highlights the Sanghatana as the only Indian organization to publicly back the Dunkel draft and the GATT agreement, fighting alone against a combined Left, BJP and Congress propaganda campaign.
• Concludes that the Nehruvian licence-permit-inspector state has produced criminalization of politics and that a new open-economy political vehicle, drawing in Minoo Masani’s Bombay gathering of liberals, is the only remaining alternative for farmers.