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 from Bombay, Pune and other large cities to visit Nipani and see for themselves the conditions in which these women lived. They could come and then write about the tobacco workers in city papers and talk about it. But while it gave them publicity it did not alter the actual conditions of bidi workers. Their sorrow and tragic living conditions were like a capital on which images of those city leaders were built. Subhash Joshi was once active with the Socialist Party but was disillusioned when he came in closer touch with many of their top leaders. He then decided to focus his attention on his Nipani social work. With his colleagues, largely his students, he would bicycle through the villages and distribute leaflets telling farmers about the injustices meted out to them and appealing them to rise. They would also organize meetings wherever possible. In a way, his work had prepared the ground on which Sharad Joshi would one day plant the seeds of his thoughts. Subhash Joshi had a chance meeting with Vijay Parulkar who had come to Nipani to study the conditions of devdasis, another group of exploited women, who as per tradition could not marry and were often forced into a kind of prostitution. Parulkar told him about Sharad Joshi and the inspiring struggle of the sugarcane and onion growers. Subhash Joshi and his colleague Gopinath Dharia, himself a tobacco farmer and brother of Mohan Dharia, former Union Minister for Commerce, felt Joshi should come to Nipani. They were sure someone like him, would put fresh life into their own work in Nipani. In response to their invitation Sharad Joshi arrived in Nipani on 30 January 1981. This was his first visit to Nipani. Upon arrival he straight away went to Subhash Joshi’s home. That was the first meeting of two Joshis and the beginning of a major struggle of the tobacco growers and workers that was to follow. When this writer met Subhash Joshi at his home in Nipani on 24 October 2012, he narrated the entire story of what Smouldering Tobacco in Nipani

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