Bindu Madhav Joshi

Bindu Madhav Joshi, known widely as Nana, was a Pune-based organiser who founded the Akhil Bharatiya Grahak Panchayat and was among the group of volunteers who set up the Mumbai Grahak Panchayat. He was a freedom fighter and a graduate of SP College, Pune.

The consumer movement he built was a response to conditions in the early and mid-1970s, when essential goods were scarce and hoarding, black marketing and short weights and measures were routine. In 1974 Joshi brought together social workers and public figures in Pune, among them Sudhir Phadke, P. L. Deshpande, Professor Dandekar and G. V. Behere, to form the Yuvak Mahamandal Janata Grahak Sangh. Before Diwali that year the group organised its first collective supply of festival goods through consumer associations, and declared a boycott of textile shops on Laxmi Road, with volunteers buying cloth directly from manufacturers and selling it on at much lower prices. Jayaprakash Narayan, then leading a national agitation, endorsed the effort during a visit to Pune. The Akhil Bharatiya Grahak Panchayat was formally inaugurated on 23 December 1975 by Justice M. C. Chagla.

The same period produced the Mumbai Grahak Panchayat, founded in 1975 by volunteers from Pune and Mumbai including Joshi, Sudhir Phadke, P. W. Gadgil, Madhukar Mantri and others, and registered under the Charity Commissioner in 1981. Its central idea was collective purchase and monthly distribution of household essentials on a no-profit, no-loss basis, beginning with 25 families and later serving tens of thousands across Mumbai, Thane, Raigad, Pune, Ratnagiri and Palghar. The distribution system was later cited internationally as a model for sustainable consumption, and the organisation moved from distribution into consumer education, protection and litigation.

Under Joshi's leadership and that of those who followed him, the Akhil Bharatiya Grahak Panchayat spread to more than twenty-five states and close to two hundred districts.[3][4]