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 enough to eat and drink, his biggest need was of clothes. Naturally the first industry to develop was textile mills. British took our cotton at the lowest price and sold us their mill-made cloth at the highest price. This symbolized their entire economic policy of exploitation. Gandhiji fought against this exploitation with the instrument of khadi and charkha, the spinning wheel, was made the symbol of freedom struggle. This one fact captured entire philosophy and politics of cotton. In 1947 the white Angrez left and his place was taken by the brown Angrez; but the exploitation of farmers continued. Government did everything to keep the cotton prices low. The ban on cotton export had been more or less perpetual. If there ever was any possibility of the farmer getting a little higher price for his cotton, Government would immediately import cotton and ensure that price did not increase. Government did it ostensibly to protect the interest of the handloom sector which could continue to buy cotton at low price. But the total requirement of that handloom sector was barely four hundred thousand bales of cotton. Some alternative arrangement could have been made easily for that. But under the pretext of providing them this quantity of cotton, government destroyed the complete market of ten million bales of cotton, which was twenty five times bigger than handloom sector requirement. Joshi said, ‘One uses cotton to stop blood oozing out of a wound; but the blood has continued to flow out of cotton crop for years together.’ The work of SS spread all across Maharashtra through the cotton agitation. Onion, sugarcane or tobacco were comparatively small crops. Cotton was far bigger a crop and far more widespread. It occupied most of Vidarbha and a large part of Marathwada. The largest number of farmers attending various rallies of SS came from these regions and the maximum number of workers of SS also came from cotton fields. Cotton occupied major portion of Sharad Joshi’s life struggle. Q

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Sharad Joshi : Leading Farmers to the Centre Stage