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 the struggle would spread nationwide, it would inspire farmers in other areas for a similar struggle for their crops and through that a chain of transformation in national agriculture would be set in motion. Speaking at a personal level, Joshi got the confidence from this agitation that his one point programme, ‘remunerative price for farm produce’ could unite and galvanize farmers who had remained dispersed, suppressed and exploited for centuries. That was the very first struggle for SS. It proved the strength of their organization. In that struggle, Joshi used for the first time weapons like rasta roko and fasting. In a way a senior civil servant like him was just not cut out for squatting on the road under the hot sun. He was also an intellectual and even for an intellectual such agitation was not a familiar terrain. It was so incongruous with his past that no one who knew him could have predicted that something like this might happen in his life. It was no surprise that he often quipped, ‘Shetkari Sanghatana was an accident in my life.’ But all this did happen. It made a serious academician like him a staunch fighter. This was the beginning of his future work. Out of this spark, a mighty fire was to erupt. Q

Onions in Chakan : First Spark

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