Page:Sharad Joshi - Leading Farmers to the Centre Stage.pdf/198

 3. Follow the “divide and rule” policy by creating bogus divisive issues like big farmers versus small farmers, farmers versus farm labourers or Marathi versus Kannada. 4. Spread misunderstanding about the farmers through media by projecting them as lazy, irresponsible and fatalistic and always encourage the view that they are poor precisely because of these drawbacks in their character. 5. If despite these the farmers still rose in unity, then crush their agitation by use of brutal force just the way police did in Nashik and Nipani. Joshi trained his followers to give up old poetic ideas glorifying farming as a service to his mother earth, duty of sons of the soil, and other emotional phrases and to look at farming as if it was their profession. He wanted farmers to be thoroughly professional in their farming and for that he explained to them the economics of farming; something they had never been told. As a first step he taught them how to work out the production cost. Start from the soil, he would say. You might have inherited it, but you must add the depreciation cost of that inheritance in your production cost. Assuming that you sold the land and put that money in the bank you would get interest of say 10% which you did not get while you farmed your land. Therefore, that loss of 10% should be added to your production cost in the form of depreciation. Assets like well, cowshed, silos, bunds, fencing, engine, pump, pipeline, equipment etc. should be considered as capital assets and 10% depreciation on that must be added too. In the event of a natural calamity, which struck fairly regularly, such as floods or droughts, you would lose your entire crop. Joshi called such calamities as “asmani calamities”. Provision must be made in your costing for such losses.

When White Gold Turned Red

Q

185