Pioneer

Famines, natural calamities, brutal exploitation by traders, moneylenders, and private factories had all conspired to nearly destroy the peasantry in the Deccan area of Maharashtra in early decades of the 20th Century. The co operative sugar factory of small farmers that Vitthalrao Vikhe Patil (1897-1984) built against all odds at a remote village of Loni set a trend and rescued the small farmers from this calamity. Vitthalrao was the authentic and creative proponent of peasants' power. A quintessential farmer with native wisdom, Vitthalrao employed innovative systems to use a small share of the accumulated wealth created by co-operative factory for public activities including education. The striking success of this experiment inspired many socially minded peasant leaders to emulate the model triggering a rural resurgence that had a far reaching impact on the rural economy and consequently on social and political life of Maharashtra. Vaikunthrai Mehta, that saintly Gandhian, described Vitthalrao in 1951 as a "non-violent revolutionary". The observation proved prophetic when within a decade replication of the Pravara co-operative model brought about a dramatic transformation in the lives of the people of rural Maharashtra. Vitthalrao made the sugar co-operatives a dynamic catalytic agent of that change. Areas of rural Maharashtra that joined the co-operative revolution remained immune to the distressing uncertainties of modern agriculture whose impact tragically manifests in recent spate suicides among Vidarbha farmers. The book narrates the exciting story of this extraordinary Indian peasant's long fight with rural elite and vested interests to build the co-operative, of his frustrations, perseverance and his never-say-die spirit.

Vitthalrao's life spans a turbulent era of ferocious socio-political movements that rocked Maharashtra and defined the general character of its people. With deep commitment to amelioration of peasants, Vitthalrao was passionately interested in these movements. The book lucidly presents a broad overview of this complex forment in historic context and thus is expected to be of interest, apart from lay readers, to students and scholars of Maharashtra's recent social history and its rural economy