Eulogium on Sugar Cooperatives
Ganesh Prashad
THE POLITICS OF DEVELOPMENT: SUGAR CO-OPERATIVES IN RURAL MAHARASHTRA by B.S. Baviskar Oxford University Press, New Delhi, 1980, 241 pp., 75.00
Nov-Dec 1980, volume 5, No 11/12

Sugar has produced magnates, bosses, operators and lobbies. These have held the country to ransom. The phenomenon will make V.L. Mehta and D.R. Gadgil turn in their graves. The former, Minister of Finance and Co-operation in post­-Independence Bombay state, had encou­raged the growth of co-operative sugar factories with great enthusiasm. The latter, a renowned economist and a zealous chairman for the first ten years of the first post-independence co-opera­tive sugar factory, created an organiza­tional framework and laid down certain practices and conventions which became a model for subsequent factories.

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