Shetkari Sanghatana founder Sharad Joshi passes away

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Sharad Joshi

Economist, agriculturist, prolific journalist and prominent farmer leader Sharad Joshi, who founded the Shetkari Sanghatana, passed away at his residence here on Saturday. He was 81.

According to family sources, Mr. Joshi had been ailing for some days. He was discharged from a city hospital earlier this month.

Mr. Joshi hailed from Satara district in western Maharashtra. He was a much-feted student and a trained economist who worked with the Indian Postal Services for nearly a decade and with the United Nations for nearly as long. Consistently brilliant in academics, he briefly lectured in Economics and Statistics at the University of Pune in 1957.

He founded the pan-Maharashtra farmer’s organisation ‘Shetkari Sanghatana’ in 1979 with the catchy slogan ‘Freedom of access to markets and to Technology.’ The organisation served as a template for future famers’ outfits in challenging the ruling classes and bargaining for higher remunerative prices. Mr. Joshi’s movement took up the cause of thousands of onion, cotton and sugarcane farmers across Maharashtra.

At the same time, his training as an economist led him to controversially endorse technologies like Bt Cotton.

He was also member of the Rajya Sabha between 2004 and 2010. He stirred up a mild storm when he became the lone member of the Upper House to vote against the Women’s Reservation Bill in March 2010. His argument was it was preferable to make women strong electorally through the Panchayati Raj system before partial reservation was introduced at the Centre and State levels.

Mr. Joshi claimed that his organisations, the Shetkari Sanghatana and the Shetkari Mahila Aghadi, were the first in the country to propose 100 per cent women panels in the Panchayati Raj elections in Maharashtra as early as in 1986. The move had allegedly rattled the then Congress government under Shankarrao Chavan to such an extent that it did not hold panchayat elections for the next three years.

Mr. Joshi is survived by a son and a daughter.