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Farmers respond rationally to price movements; they will react to price incentives by increasing acreage and investment and by adopting improved technology. Farmers’ response will increase demand for labour and, hence, wage earners will benefit. As a consequence of additional income so received, farmers will undertake non-agricultural activities; thus, creating employment and the incremental income to bolster industrial growth. Trade and the exchange are beneficial for attaining higher levels of production and higher standards of living. Selfsufficiency is the virtue of less cerebral species. The system based on self-sufficiency will often be exposed to droughts and famines. Human societies have proved many Doomsday forecasters wrong through innovation and technology. The history of mankind shows that the good of the masses comes not so much from social or political institutions as from the advancement of technology.

Thus the overall philosophy of the SS was that price incentive in agriculture and a “natural” process of capital accumulation driven by an agricultural revolution could benefit the entire economy and break the vicious cycle of poverty. As opposed to this, an accumulation process driven by industrial revolution (before agricultural revolution) was always premised upon a coercive expropriation of agriculture surplus. Though SS sought minimum price from the Government, it was only as a temporary relief. He always said, ‘Today the farmer is so down, so poor that we have to give him some immediate relief, just as a person who is very weak, has to be first placed on saline. It is not a lasting solution. Moreover, we seek this fair price from the government only 188

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Sharad Joshi : Leading Farmers to the Centre Stage