Talking to an Empty Room: Sharad Joshi in Rajya Sabha

By Hardikar Vinay

He got the hang of his audience very quickly and then decided how high the pole-vault bar was to be set; and his audience ranged from the at-post-level villagers to international experts in fields of political economy, philosophy, culture, media and sometimes literature...
His speeches may not have won acceptance of the policy-ma

• Language: English
• Publisher: MediaNext Infoprocessors Pvt. Ltd.
• Release date: Dec 11, 2018
• ISBN: 9788193830338

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Talking to an Empty Room

Sharad Joshi in Rajya Sabha

First Release:

12 December 2018

© Shetkari Sanghatana

Regd. No. E-6966 (Pune)

Angarmala,

Vill. & Po. Ambethan,

Tal. Khed, Dist. Pune 410 501

Publisher / Printer:

Anand Agashe,

Menaka Prakashan, 2117, Sadashiv Peth,

Vijayanagar Colony, Pune – 411030

Phone: [phone]

Email: [e-mail]

Website: www.menakaprakashan.com

Cover design:

Kiran Velhankar

Layout:

Rahul Phuge

Production Head:

Amit Tekale

ISBN (E-Book) - 978-81-938303-3-8

Price: Rs. 350/-

For online purchase:

www.menakabooks.com

The text, images and any other matter included in this book cannot be photocopied, reprinted, translated or converted to any other medium without the permission of the copyright holder. Any attempt to violate the

Copyright Act would attract penal action.

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To All the Valiant Soldiers in the

Strugle for Farmers’ Freedom

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Acknowledgements:

1. Rajya Sabha Secretariat

2. Shetkari Sanghatana (Trust)

3. Menaka Prakashan, Pune

Financial Support:

1. Anant Deshpande

2. Darshini Bhattji

3. Dinesh Sharma

4. Hemant Borawake

5. Rajeev Basrgekar

6. Shamrao Pawar

7. Shashank Jewalikar

8. Sureshchandra Mhatre

9. Vaibhav Kashikar

10. Vinay Hardikar

A leading public intellectual from Maharashtra (India), Vinay Hardikar

wears several hats with great elan. His

socio-political activism has spanned more than four decades, twenty-five years of them in association with Shetkari Sanghatana leader Sharad Joshi. Never scared to swim against the tide, he speaks his mind on a wide range of subjects including politics, role of civil society, farmers’ issues, literature, music and journalism. He enjoys proficiency in six languages – Marathi, English, Hindi, Gujarati, Kannada, Sanskrit, and is conversant with Bengali

and Tamil.

Janancha Pravaho Chalila, Vinay’s path-breaking book about his experiences during the dark days Emergency, bears testimony to his keen observations, original thinking and incisive analysis clothed in precise words. The attributes are evident in his other books as well. Born in 1949, he is an avid trekker and a motor-cyclist. Vinay takes out time from his teaching engagements to deliver lectures, and write for many periodicals on topics close to his heart.

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PREFACE

The Square Peg and the Round Hole

Marx got ideology right; but his economics was wrong.

Gandhi got economics right; but his ideology was wrong. Shetkari Sanghatana (sic Sharad Joshi) has got both right.

Sharad Joshi in 1985

During my Narmada Parikrama I met a Sadhu who said that the farmers of India were paying for the sins of their past lives and doing anything for them was pointless. I wonder if he had a point.

Sharad Joshi in 2006

History has thrown up a number of ‘religious’ individuals who adhered to no religion; Sharad Joshi, similarly, was a politician who did not care for politics. Always correct and consistent in economics, he was always wrong and inconsistent in politics. No wonder that he came to parliament (Rajya Sabha-RS) some twenty years after his time. Yet, as was his habit, he took part in the proceedings with commitment, zest and depth. A collection of his speeches in the RS should therefore be useful to both his admirers and critics.

Joshi was a RS member from 2004 to 2010. True to form, both the timing and the method of his election were wrong and awkward to all but more particularly to himself. He was 69, absolutely spent after over 25 years of ceaseless effort to liberate the farmers of India from the slavery imposed on them by state policy in the nehruvian era which had continued four decades after Nehru. Not just that, he had in a way struck a bargain with the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) lead by the then Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee for this membership and, at great embarrassment to himself, campaigned for NDA -mainly for BJP and Shiv Sena nominees- whom till the mid-90s he vociferously criticised; his vehemence reflect in the phrase ‘communalist vultures’ he had coined for them. There is reason to believe that Vajpayee had warmed up to him, that Joshi expected the NDA to be back at the centre and he assumed rightfully (not rightly) he would get the Agriculture Ministry and would be able to effect decisive revamping of state policy for agriculture-making in Farmer-centric instead of consumer-centric as it had been all along, free the farmers from the trap of permanent indebtedness and open the gates of both inland and world trade where Indian farmers would show that their poverty so far had been due to state policy and not due to the causes popular with economists and state certified expert advisers—traditional methods of cultivation, small holdings, apathy to new science and technology blah blah blah…

Good intent without doubt but based on totally wrong reading of how the political winds were blowing. The cradle and the baby both came down. For the first time the country found a qualified pro-liberation and globalisation economist in Dr Manmohan Singh who in the first year as PM provided Rs 71000 crores for waiving agricultural loans- admittedly it was haphazard and uncouth in that it divided the farmers into small-big and played obsolete leftist tunes in the era of the New Economic Order. Be that as it may Joshi was reduced to thoughts of what might have been.

In a way his presence in RS was like a generalship without a war because the parliamentary battleground had shifted to Lok Sabha-LS long back. Constitutionally RS was conceived as the Upper House (House of Lords or Senate) to accommodate capable individuals-cream of society-who would not have ‘elective merit’-a most abused term- yet could contribute to policy making by striking a balance between the politically convenient and the desirable; the expedient and the lasting; the short term and the long term. It was supposed that political parties would identify such individuals and bring them to RS. This idealism was under threat even when Nehru was there but it went totally out of the window when Indira Gandhi took over and RS was reduced to a reserved space for never to retire seniors who had got a son/daughter elected to LS, party functionaries and cronies who knew too much about the leadership, conmen and power brokers, big players in industry, trade who could buy nomination by obliging political parties and/or party bosses and finally, for face saving, politically correct media persons, popular figures from sports and films. While the LS sessions were vibrant and ‘newsworthy’, RS continued in its stupor- waking up only when a bill that was passed by LS needed to be thwarted or at least stalled. The centre of gravity of parliamentary debate was never in RS during Joshi’s stint. One wonders whether the ex-bureaucrat in him—always looking for surety of tenure—had dominated his choice. Reading these speeches is enjoyable for the substance, logic, steadfastness of the argument; the piquancy of diction is unmistakable but who was Joshi talking to? How many were present and of them how many really grasped what he was saying?

* * *

If LS was the right arena for Joshi what stopped him from going there? Admittedly, compilers-editors-analysts have the benefit of hindsight and can question the decisions of influential leaders but during his last years even Joshi would concede that things need not have gone the way they had. His best chance to win a LS seat was back in the mid-1980’s when the Shetkari Sanghatana (also SS, one of the ironies of politics?) had taken the state of Maharashtra by storm by rapid successful mobilisation of onion, sugarcane, tobacco and cotton growing farmers. Another feather in the SS cap was the Shetkari Mahila Aghadi (Women’s Front) which was by far the largest women’s body in the country with thousands of women joining their men-folk in agitations. Joshi had convincingly argued that the nehruvian economic model which handed over the definition of development as well as implementation of development agenda to the State (sic bureaucracy) was the real culprit in the undermining of agriculture and political parties without exception had farmers’ blood on their hands. He had exposed the sins of the Agricultural Price Commission in fixing prices of farm produce way below the cost of production and demanded Raast Bhav (judicious, just, fair prices, not ‘remunerative prices’ as misrepresented by his critics) and appealed to the farmers of ‘Bharat’ that they could lose their chains by choking the supply to the cities-‘ India’ in his parlance. The SS spread like wild fire in 2/3s of Maharashtra and was powerful in north-Maharashtra, Vidarbha and Marathawada.

Joshi had also declared the Congress-I as enemy number one of farmers and had invited the opposition parties to form a joint front against the Cong-I, assuring them of SS support in the assembly elections of 1985. This was his ‘double summersault’ theory- joining hands with oppressor No 2 to fight No 1 and possibly toppling both in the melting pot of politics. In addition he had developed a new Marathi idiom for SS cadres and followers. His masterly strategies of Rasta Roko and Rail Roko had baffled the state- till then used to take farmers for granted. Wonderstruck, farmers small and big, irrigated-non-irrigated, educated-half/uneducated, young-old flocked to listen to him. The media watched him in awe.

The opposition was quick in seeing Joshi as the general to defeat Cong-I. The BJP offered him direct entry as national vice-president and Shiv Sena promised him chief ministership. Only the incorrigible socialists and communists were against him; so was the Peasants and Workers Party(PWP) which was already marginalised by astute congress leaders. It goes without saying that both BJP and Sena would have offered him safe constituencies; but his allergy to them was incurable. Joshi not only declined these offers but stuck to another political theory—that of the ‘balancing vote’.

It has to be recorded at this juncture that Joshi’s understanding of how democracy worked-especially the democracy in India- was always flawed. He had never participated in the democratic mechanism except perhaps as a voter. The early middle years of his life (30’s) were spent in Switzerland and he had observed the european democracies which functioned well even if the difference between the ruling and opposition parties was marginal. Indian democracy in the Indira Gandhi era was dominated by ‘waves’- three in her favour (1971, 1979 and posthumously 1984) and one against her (1977) where every time the opposition parties had been routed. Not just that, there was no way to prevent defections from the opposition to ruling parties at state/national level. Whole armies crossed over without a shot fired; the knowledgeable watched in disgust while the gullible sang praises of how their leader/s managed to be always on the right side of the fence. It was in this milieu of shameless pursuit of power and sycophancy (hero worship is decent though not desirable) that Joshi was talking of the balancing vote when the balance unfailingly tilted to one side.

* * *

His initiative worked to some extent (just enough for him tom stick to his theory) in the 1985 assembly elections in Maharashtra but never again. In addition he had made a bold statement that he would never come asking for votes and people may shoe-worship him –jutonse maro- if he ever did ! This statement was to haunt him for life. The sad fact is that in spelling out Shetkari Sanghatana’s political strategy in 1980 he had been careful and said that all options- taking part in elections to total boycott- were open to the SS and the decision would be taken according to what best served the SS agenda to stengthen the Sanghatana. Politics is unforgiving to one and all- Joshi had to modify the first statement to I will never ask for votes for myself; eventually he had to go back on that too.

Similar was the fate of his strategy of diagnosing the ‘most significant contradiction’ in the system and widening it to the humbling of the establishment; the Bharat-India divide in simple words. He was right in economics when he said that Bharat was the victim of the nehruvian model while India was the beneficiary and the terms of trade between the two were heavily anti-Bharat. Encouraged by the surge of support to the SS he over optimistically predicted that in the next elections to parliament-due in 1989- all political parties would split vertically on Bharat-India lines and since Bharat was overwhelmingly large in numbers the next government would definitely be pro-Bharat; India would wither away like the state after a people’s revolution. Eyebrows were raised over this day-dream but it certainly looked worth a try. It also propelled the SS and Joshi to the national level ; enthusiasm for this fresh future polarisation was great; a lot of effort went into finding like-minded organisations and influential agitations; it was also undertaken to compile a list of prominent pro-Bharat personalities from all walks of life and persuade them to contest the next LS elections.

Joshi was right about polarisation. It did happen. But on communal lines; not on economic lines.

An unsuspecting district court judge opened the gates of the Babur-i-Masjid to Hindu worshippers in 1986 and the country was thrown into political quandary. The Ram-Rahim unity as propounded by Kabir lost its magic; you had to side with one of them. A simple ruling of a small court became a watershed. It threw a life-jacket to the BJP wilting with just two members in the then LS and it was never to look back since. In a way Joshi had expected this; he always maintained that the economistic was always under threat of the obscurantist; the empty stomach and squalor were forgotten for god, religion, race, creed, language etc. He stayed firm on his secular position.

In addition there was yet another development no one had predicted. While it looked apparent that the Cong-I would complete its 5 years in power and would be voted back in the next LS elections, the magic of democracy came into play. When there was no opposition worth mention in parliament, opposition emerged from within the ruling party in the form of V P Singh-till then a staunch Nehru-Gandhi dynasty loyalist. His stance over the Bofors deal and his subsequent expulsion from Cong-I provided a life line to the always-on-oxygen Third Front. Now the polity was tri-polar; communal-secular-ethical. Joshi and SS were simply baffled by the speed and weight of this scenario; never had they considered it in their wildest imagination. Back in 1984 both had survived the setback after the unforeseen assassination of Indira Gandhi and stayed in political reckoning and come back as a cementing agent for the opposition at least in Maharashtra. The 1987 scenario was beyond them. But all was not lost; non-Cong-I leaders were still making overtures to Joshi: three future prime ministers were present at a SS plenary in 1987—Vajpayee, V P Singh and Chandrashekhar.

The imbroglio was three dimensional. SS and Joshi had closed doors on the Cong-I from day one and the Third Front, dominated by socialists and communists, had closed doors on him. BJP would take him but he was still allergic to them and refused to have anything to do with them. So the BJP, at least in Maharashtra, was left with Shiv Sena as the only partner-a troubled marriage which has lasted for three decades; getting more troubled all the time. V P Singh offered Joshi a blank cheque and asked SS to contest 28 LS seats in Maharashtra: Joshi procrastinated and finally never took the offer. Worse still, he announced on the eve of voting day that SS workers should generally vote for Singh’s Janata Dal but if there was a straight fight between the Cong-I and BJP-Sena they should vote for Cong-I. This ended his political credibility for all times; political parties dropped him like a dead stone and SS supporters realised that their leader simply was not made for power politics in a democracy: 1989 LS elections were his Waterloo.

Yet all was not lost; V P Singh stayed true to his promise and announced a loan waiver of Rs 10,000 for all farmers and offered Joshi cabinet rank as the Chairman of the Standing Advisory committee for agriculture. This was brightest moment of Joshi’s career and SS felt proud. But it was short lived as was V P Singh at the top. It must be mentioned to Joshi’s credit that he made no effort to hang on. He came back to his home in Ambethan, Pune. One wrong step had nullified the hard work of 12 years. Farmers’ woes worsened; resulting in a spate of suicides in the Sanghatana stronghold of Vidarbha and rapidly spreading in the adjacent Marathawada. All in all Joshi’s political strategy had worked significantly in just one assembly election in Maharashtra.

At home Joshi was faced with the uproar in the SS over his volte-face on the eve of voting. He overcame it by offering to resign as the SS philosopher and guide—knowing well that this would not be accepted. But he came back intelligently in 1992 seeing a ray of hope in the induction of Man Mohan Singh as finance minister in the Narsimha Rao cabinet. There was no need to contest elections now, he argued it was imminent that India would sign the GATT—releasing farmers from all forms of slavery-farmers would be free to trade in and outside the country on their terms. Another double summersault. In reality a case of more easily said than done. Like most Indians did not understand the independence of 15 Aug 1947 because life was same the next morning; farmers too saw no light though the sun had (reportedly?) risen.

* * *

Be that as it may, it would be unfair to belittle the achievements of Joshi and the Sanghatana. Farmers’ issues were at the top of the national political agenda; the state was on the back foot and conceded that agriculture (not farmers!) had received step-motherly treatment . The pressure of countrywide agitations had helped to stabilise prices to some extent and some thousand crores of rupees had gone back to the farmers. Joshi’s mis-management of his own politics had created another opportunity for the well entrenched political parties: he had diagnosed the malaise but ‘they’ would set things right; he was not in their way anymore.

Joshi would have loved to close shop in wake of India’s acceptance of GAAT and go in search of another adventure (he used to share with his close associate that the farmers’ cause was not the end of his journey and he would quit after India was integrated in the New Economic Order and joined the World Trade Organisation. Early 1990’s were that moment but Joshi had once more mis-read the situation.

Joshi did not know that when farmers get a good leader they work him to death like they work a good ox to death ( Graham Greene in Meeting the General ). They just would not let go of him!

Despite the continuous political fiascos thousands of farmers were still loyal to him and had earned, just like he had, a permanent distrust of all political parties: nobody wanted them! Elections to the state assembly were due in 1995 and these devoted cadres served Joshi an ultimatum—this time they would not work for any of the parties/ alliances in the fray at his behest: either they would have their own party or would just sit tight! So the Swatantra Bharat Paksha-SBP was launched towards the end of 1994 as the state elections were due in early ’95: if there ever was a political party which the founder did not want this was one- the mother remaining indifferent to her child all along; naturally SBP has remained a rickety baby over two decades–politically it was still-born.

The 90’s were the years of coalitions in the country- both at state and centre and Joshi’s theory of balancing vote would have worked as coalition politics ensures that even small parties can force the hands of the bigwigs and get better bargains. The SBP should have focussed on about a dozen strongholds where the Sanghatana was still a force to reckon with. Instead Joshi went for ‘glorious defeat’ (his own words) and planned to field SBP nominees in all 288 assembly segments: a recipe for disaster. The SBP could cover about 225 constituencies with Toms-Dicks-Harrys joining the jamboree; only one seat was won; Joshi himself, though lost, had done splendidly in one of the 2 seats he contested. (Third in subsequent LS elections)

Truthfully, SBP was the only party in the country with a clear ideology: democracy, secularism, individual freedom, free enterprise, decentralisation and doing away with (the need for?) reservations were excellent tenets but the SBP, by its strategies, ensured total isolation when it could not win on its own from anywhere. For instance the SBP slogan ‘neta, taskar, gunda, afasar; dayen- bayen , madhyam margi, sabhi saare desh ke dushman !’ was brilliant in wording but totally unpragmatic in the politics as it stood: SBP was reduced to a laughing stock in political circles.

It was suggested by some seniors in the Sanghatana that riding two bicycles was getting difficult with both bicycles either going nowhere or getting stuck and now the two should be merged to form an SBP which could practice the ‘art of the possible’. Joshi rejected it with greater determination than he had displayed in launching the SBP. There were 4 LS elections and 2 assembly elections after the formation of SBP ; the sad tale continued. Joshi had no party when he had clout; now he had a party but no clout!

* * *

While the first 12 years of Joshi were marked by clarity, confusion was the watch word for the next 12 years. Things were not any better in the Sanghatana which he preferred over the SBP. The first two generations were exhausted both in body and brain. The next generation to take forward the torch was nowhere to be seen. Initially, the Sanghatana had attracted the thoughtful among the farmers; now it became a haven for half-educated unemployed rural youth bordering on the lumpen. Joshi was reduced to just an icon; they would go ahead with their own politics which was not much different from contemporary political trends- self-promotion at any cost was their mantra. The Sanghatana split not on ideological grounds but because of ambitions of individual workers who had nursed their own electoral pockets. Joshi watched helplessly; occasionally philosophising-‘I did not invite anyone; I cannot stop anyone!’

Exhausted and confused Joshi, like the proverbial salmon, began a return journey; he had reached the mouth of the river only to find himself unwanted. It was now time to go back! He dismissed the suggestion that the Sanghatana should now be transformed into an entrepreneurs’ organisation with a shrug (So U don’t want get off their chest even after they are free?- his very words). For the first time in over 25 years he resorted to tokenism and took a bunch of cronies to drown loan documents in the ocean at Rameshwar! His uphill journey had been enviably fast so was the downhill passage, unenviably !

The BJP even now wanted Sharad Joshi the agricultural economist but not the agitationist and Vajpayee was out to befriend one and all. Friendless, his 1st stint as PM was 13 days; with a few friends, the 2nd term lasted for just about 13 months: he had learnt his lesson. He warmed up to Joshi; offered him the chairmanship of the Task Force on Agriculture and successfully landed the farmers’ ‘Moby Dick’- he had bagged Sharad Joshi.

Joshi had a huge cost to pay for this about turn and lost more than half of the national executive committee of SBP. To add insult to injury he lost the Task Force on Agriculture the moment Ajit Singh was appointed Minister for Agriculture: Singh was avenging an old insult by Joshi. But in the next LS elections 2004 the BJP persuaded him to canvass for the NDA with RS membership in bargain. For once Joshi’s political strategy was right but ill-fated. Firstly, the NDA lost power, secondly Joshi had scraped through second preference votes of Shiv Sena; politics had been unforgiving once again!

* * *

Way back in the mid-1980’s three publications had published lists of Indians who mattered most; with 20, 30 and 50 individuals in each. 7 names were common to all 3 lists and Joshi’s was one of them. Out of the other six, two were Indira Gandhi and P V Narsimha Rao: both need no introduction. And here, 2000s, was a tired, marginalised Joshi sitting in RS and talking to an empty room. He received very little media attention and his speeches in RS were heard when they were telecast mostly by those Sanghatana loyalists who understood English moderately. How could so rich a promise end in such seclusion ?

Also, in the mid-1980’s Chandrashekhar, present at the Sanghatana rally mentioned earlier had cautioned him not to bargain with the establishment/system, but work to transform it. ("Vyavasthase sauda mat keejiye; use badalaneka prayas keejiye. Nahi to ek din vyavastha usake shart par aapase sauda karavayegi’’). Should Joshi have taken the hint: because the NDA had gained more in the last sauda.

Inexperienced in ways of Indian politicians and ignorant of their immense patience and capacity to take humiliation in their stride, didn’t Joshi realise that they were just ‘hearing him out’ and would never ‘listen’ to him ? While he grandly boasted that he would use them to his ends, he was being used by them?

In the excitement of the surge of support for his one point agenda didn’t Joshi realise that in politics what gets fast done, gets undone very fast too? He had only to look back in the immediate past: how fast was the rise of the Janata Party and faster its decline. Was this the reason that he never bothered to set up a well structured organisation/party? Also, did he miss the wisdom of Gandhi who timed his agitations in such a way that every time there would be a new generation manning them?

Consistency is a much maligned word as the virtue of the asses and asses are no race horses: yet functioning of democracy depends on a balance between the two. Did Joshi run too fast for the farmers who had just woken up to the true causes of their predicament? Or did the farmers go their own separate ways during elections and come back to him only between elections to fight for them ? Did they live up to Graham Greene’s words?

But that would be unfair. Farmers, at least in Maharashtra, had given Joshi whatever they could and they wanted, in the 80’s to give him their votes too . His pledge of never asking for votes stood in the way. Joshi miscalculated the response to agitations as the key to political change; his arithmetic was wrong. 25,000 is a big number for an agitation; but in a democracy as huge as the Indian it is a paltry sum ; even assembly segments have more than 1 lakh voters and parliament constituencies have over 10 lakh ! Sooner or later the Indian parliament will need to have at least a thousand members if there is to be true representation of voters’ aspirations.

Finally, Joshi failed to understand that in a democracy success is understood as victory in elections and not as number of times a leader/party surprised the state and held it to ransom!

Agitations are the start and not the end of the road. People want their leader/s to win elections, grab power and give them a chance to exalt in the glory (sic reflected limelight). Masses are not armies.

So much for the Square Peg...

Now to the Round Hole...

Suffice it to say that the round hole of Indian politics keeps getting wider all the time and it is a bottomless abyss. It is not, like the ‘Black Holes’ in the universe, a source of energy; every time it gets wider the square pegs of agitations and their leaders just slip and vanish into the abyss.

It would be eye-opening to go in to the genesis of this tragedy of all agitations and respective leaders: the system either hijacks their agenda (Nehru and the socialists) or just tires them out (Indira Gandhi and Jay Prakash Narayan)! The system allows the egos of agitation leaders to bloat and leads them to believe that they have caught the state napping and now they will call the shots. While they are in this stupor the system gets busy in making inroads into the agitations’ mass-base and buying off second rank workers if the price is right; the Patel andolan in Gujrat should be an interesting case-study.

Diversity and inequality were chronic in India and the Indian state only added to them by its centralised over enthusiasm in assuming control of the political economy. Every time a fresh initiative is taken a new class of victims emerges. Their grievances are sometimes economic, sometimes political and sometimes mixed: