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 meeting or a convention, how could you ensure the presence of women? Unless your own wife was accompanying you, how could you expect the wives of others to attend? He encouraged women from farming families to leave their homes for the first time and gave them equal status in the agitation. It was the first time anyone had performed this miracle.’ (Sakal, Sunday, 20 December 2015) On 22 August 1985 an exclusive gathering of women was arranged at Dabhadi in Malegaon taluka of Nashik district. To prepare for that gathering, head of the Mahila Aghadi of Sanghatana Mangala Ahire, Mrunalini Khairnar and Suman Deore travelled through the Baglan and Malegaon talukas for eleven days along with forty other women. Shubhangi Badrinath Deokar presided over that gathering. Close to 15,000 women attended it. That kind of response was quite unexpected. In that very gathering the decision to boycott synthetic or imported clothes from 2 October 1985 was announced. But that involvement of women was their involvement in the overall struggle of SS. However, there were other problems too which were exclusive to the farming women. The women who participated in the agitations, themselves, did not seem to look upon the SS for redressal of their specific grievances. To understand such problems in detail Joshi held several sessions with them at different places like Halli-Handarguli, Selu, Washim, Katol and Kopargaon during the next few months. They revealed some unexpected insights. For instance, one woman told him, ‘With your sugarcane agitation, farmers began to get more money for their sugarcane. Even my husband earned more. But it did not reduce my burden. It did not lead to better clothes and food for my children.’ Another woman added, ‘Additional income simply led to my husband drinking more and me getting more blows from him on my body.’ Other women had similar 220

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Sharad Joshi : Leading Farmers to the Centre Stage