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 that difficult. Like me, he too could have settled down here. I feel sad that he eventually decided to leave. I tried often to dissuade him but in vain. Being a strong person, he would not have changed his mind anyway. ‘It is difficult for me to say what might have prompted his decision but there are some incidents that I recall which might have played some role. One was a car accident he had. He was not a very good driver – I would say he was an average driver. The accident was really bad and Joshi’s car got completely smashed. It was so bad that it had cost him something like 7000 CHF in repairs – the kind of money insurance company would not have paid. I vaguely recall Joshi telling me that all his savings had to be emptied to pay that bill. That car accident had shaken him a lot. ‘Joshi eventually sold his owned flat and shifted to a rented flat in the proper Bern city. My feeling is that he got a good profit in that. But to me it meant that his decision to shift back to India was made.’

Joshi’s role at UPU had expanded after July 1969. Apart from the routine work he also had to support various development programmes United Nations, through its agencies, had undertaken. For that he had to travel to different countries and do statistical surveys of various projects. What he learnt in that time totally contradicted the ideas people had about the role of the United Nations. There is a little background to all this. Many Western nations and especially common citizens of those nations used to feel very concerned about the increasing inequality in the world. They felt that they had exploited their former colonies and as compensation they should support those nations now. Their feelings were genuine and widespread. That became the focus of 62

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Sharad Joshi : Leading Farmers to the Centre Stage