The usual five articles today, and as usual, about India. But there is a common theme that runs through them: that not just of agriculture, but also a tribute of sorts to a man about whom many more people should know.
- “It was time for a satyagraha — and not just in Gujarat. The late Sharad Joshi, leader of the Shetkari Sanghatana in Maharashtra, took around 10,000 farmers to Gujarat to stand with their fellows there. They sat in the fields of Bt cotton and basically said, ‘Over our dead bodies.’ Joshi’s point was simple: all other citizens of India have acesss to the latest technology from all over. They are all empowered with choice. Why should Indian farmers be held back?”
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Today’s series is inspired by Amit Varma’s article yesterday in the Times of India, in which he speaks about farmers in India not getting access to technology, but also speaks about Sharad Joshi…
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.. - “Joshi’s insights in the late 1970 was that this was caused not by the greed of middlemen but the interference of the Indian state. The state had set forth rules that the farmer could not sell his produce in an open market, responding to supply and demand, but only to a government appointed body called the Agricultural Produce Market Committee (APMC). Because the farmers are not allowed to sell to anyone else, they are forced to take the price offered to them. And because all produce comes through the APMC, buyers also have no bargaining power.”
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…about whom he has written earlier as well.
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.. - “Sharad Anantrao Joshi (3 September 1935 – 12 December 2015) was an Indian politician who founded the Swatantra Bharat Paksh party and Shetkari Sanghatana (farmers’ Organisation), He was also a Member of the Parliament of India representing Maharashtra in the Rajya Sabha, the upper house of the Indian Parliament during the period 5 July 2004 till 4 July 2010. On 9 January 2010 he was the sole MP in Rajya Sabha to vote against the bill providing 33% reservation for women in Indian parliament and assemblies.Sharad Anantrao Joshi was a member of Advisory Board of the World Agricultural Forum (WAF), the foremost global agricultural platform that initiates dialogue between those who can impact agriculture. He is also founder of Shetkari Sanghatana, an organisation for farmers. Shetakari Sanghatana is a non-political union of Farmers formed with the aim to “Freedom of access to markets and to Technology”
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Who exactly was Sharad Joshi: the Wikipedia version
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.. - “In his massive rallies, Joshi would often speak of farmers as entrepreneurs who were shackled by statism. He campaigned for higher prices because he believed these were being kept artificially low by the government, but he insisted that what was really needed was to liberate Indian farmers from a web of state controls.He believed the solution was free markets. Joshi was perhaps a soulmate of another liberal leader of the farming community, N.G. Ranga, one of the founders of the Swatantra Party in 1959. It is perhaps not a coincidence that both Ranga and Joshi were economists by training.”
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And to finish off today’s list, two articles that were written in his honor after he passed away four years ago. One from Livemint…
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.. - “However, unlike many other farmer leaders who often ask for more subsidies and higher Minimum Support Prices (MSP) from the government, Sharad Joshi’s main instrument to better farm incomes was to seek economic freedom for farmers – freedom to obtain best farm technologies from anywhere in the world and the freedom to sell their produce anwhere across time and space and time. This he gathered from his early experience in farming.”
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… and the other from TOI, written by Ashok Gulati.
EconForEverybody 
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