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 through. It was blatant and rampant corruption and the spoils surely were shared with the top. Firm opposition to any form of corruption was a hallmark of SS from the beginning. For those honest farmers this zone-bandi was stifling. When cotton was sold in Maharashtra at the rate of Rs. 960 a quintal, it fetched in Madhya Pradesh as high a rate as Rs. 2,500. It was exceedingly difficult for a farmer to accept that while he could get much higher price for his cotton just across the border, he was compelled to sell at a much lesser price. How did Joshi view the farmers’ suicides is an important question that comes to mind when writing about the cotton agitation because maximum number of farmers committing suicide happened to be cotton growers. Many city-dwellers tended to have a lot of misunderstanding about this issue. Some even thought that at times farmers committed suicide because their families got good compensation of couple of lakh rupees and when an indebted farmer realized that he could not do much for his family through his farming, at least in his death he might make some provision for them. This view was of course very cruel and also untrue. First of all, how much money actually reached the family of the farmer who had committed suicide and how much of it was siphoned off by the corrupt system was a matter to be debated. But more importantly, the will to live is so strong amongst all human beings that it was unimaginable that just for the sake of getting some compensation anybody would be driven to suicide. Joshi gave a lot of thought to this issue and wrote about it. His views could be summarized as follows: 1. In the nearby Andhra Pradesh large number of farmers who had committed suicide were prompted to do that because of the losses suffered by use of adulterated insecticides or seeds. In Maharashtra, the adulteration of insecticides or seeds had not been substantial and hence that could not be 168

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Sharad Joshi : Leading Farmers to the Centre Stage