A CONVERSATION WITH MR GHANSHYAM TIWARI, NATIONAL SPOKESPERSON, SAMAJWADI PARTY

Interviewed by Prem Ansh Sinha (Editor-in-Chief)

Edited by Sanish Kumar (Junior Editor) & Alankrita Singh (Associate Editor)

Mr Ghanshyam Tiwari is the national spokesperson of the Samajwadi Party (SP). He co-founded the Harvard India Conference and the Harvard India Student Group in 2011 while pursuing a Master of Public Administration (MPA) from the Harvard Kennedy School. Mr Tiwari also served as the advisor to the Janata Dal (United) government in Bihar from 2010 to 2015.

An edited transcript of the interview, as taken on June 1, 2024, is as follows.

If you stalk Mr Tiwari’s LinkedIn, you will find that he is an alumnus of the Indian Institute of Management (IIM) Bangalore, the Kellogg School of Management, and the Harvard Kennedy School. This brings us to a question about what brought you to the Samajwadi Party, whose name literally means ‘socialist’ in English. How does this align with your interests, and what makes you want to be a part of a political party that is gradually losing its relevance, with currently just three seats in the Lok Sabha?

As we are in the middle of the election, let me start by addressing the final part of your question: that elections are a good way to measure the relevance of a party in the eyes of the people. Those of us who have followed the elections see how the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is losing its relevance in Uttar Pradesh (UP), and people are coming to join the rallies of Mr Rahul Gandhi and Mr Akhilesh Yadav. This indicates the growing support for the party in the state. 

On the question of why people would support a party that is out of power at both the state and centre, a government called “double-engine ki sarkar” (double-engine government) is led by two supposedly popular leaders, Mr Modi and Mr Yogi, in the state. Another way to assess relevance is to have a look at the past election. The SP got three crore votes, which is not a small number. The BJP got 3 crore 80 lakh votes. The 3 crore that the SP got came from youth, women, farmers, and people from all walks of life. They believe that the party that leads UP and participates in the national government must be inclusive, must have faith in the constitution, and must be able to really work for the marginalised due to caste, religion, or economic factors. So, I am sure that one cannot have an assumption that the SP is losing relevance in UP.

Sir, despite these facts that you gave us, the Samajwadi Party is still not able to win parliamentary seats because we follow the First Past The Post (FPTP) system, which, of course, favours the BJP in the long run. So, what is your idea about it? Because even when we look at it in a very factual way, in the end, SP just has three seats in the Lok Sabha right now.

That is right. However, when you look at the elections that concluded in 2019, that was an SP, Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP), and Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD) alliance. If you look at the news cycle of 2019, it was this alliance that was seen as the most formidable force that would stop the BJP, which had a very good momentum going for it in the backdrop of national security sentiment as well as the Pulwama-Balakot episode. So, collectively, that alliance secured a large number of votes and around fifteen seats in Uttar Pradesh. I think that elections shift the sentiment from time to time. Hence, it is a fair criticism to say that we got just five seats, which was reduced to just three in the subsequent by-elections. 

In the upcoming 2024 Lok Sabha elections, this can be reversed if the SP gets fifty seats in these elections. So, I am saying that it gives an incomplete picture when one measures politics just by the number of wins rather than the amount of support that is there. I am addressing a set of young students, whose minds are fertile, and who are discovering the world in their own way, so the real question is not how many seats a party wins; rather, it is why somebody supports a political party. You started with a fantastic question: why does somebody go and work with a certain political party? That is where the political mind of both an individual as well as the electorate can be researched and discovered.

Sir, let me get to you with my next question, which is about a report from 12 June, 2012. It quotes data released by the Samajwadi Party itself, that between 1 March and 15 April, 2012, there were 699 cases of murder, 263 of rape, and 249 instances of loot. Mr Tiwari, you would agree to it as well that there are many cases that go unreported. Also, police records show that 39 communal riots happened between March 2012, when Mr Akhilesh Yadav took over as the Chief Minister, and August 2013, and these clippings stayed back in the non-National Democratic Alliance (NDA) era. One cannot say that the media was commercialised, or that it was bought by a particular party at that point. Quoting the Scroll, there were no communal riots between 2018 and 2020, according to data released by the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB). So, in this scenario, why should a young voter like me, or any other person in this meeting, both be voting for the SP, knowing these past instances? Why do you think we should be voting for the SP, given that these things might get repeated?

Again, I am surprised by the lack of clarity in the quote. I can quote, for example, that around 3,400 communal riots took place from 2016 to 2020, according to Mr Nityanand Rai, the Minister of State for Home Affairs, who spoke about this data in the parliament. So, let us be very clear about the data that we quote, because the purpose of this platform is to build your journalistic temper. You are a rising journalist, right? A good journalist will build that journalistic temper on the basis of the data that is very simply presentable. The data that is available in India is very simply presentable. If you want to criticise the track record of the Samajwadi Party as a party in power between 2012 and 2017, there are a number of ways to do that, including data. The biggest criticism that can be made in a firm manner is the fact that the Samajwadi Party lost power in 2017 from what was an absolute majority in 2012. We lost power, which means that people voted us out right. That was the year I joined the Samajwadi Party. Every government that is voted out by people is voted out because of its mistakes, because it failed to fulfil the promises and aspirations that it made to the people. Today, when we say that the BJP is going to be voted out, we believe that the BJP has failed to fulfil the promises and aspirations that relate to the voters. Coming back to the data itself—there has not been any year in the last four years, apart from the COVID-19 one, where the NCRB has reported a dip in crime. There is a rise in crime, and there is a rise in crime against women as well. Also, there is a rise in the number of people with criminal records who have entered politics. This is the force of the BJP that, at some point in time, has the largest number of people with criminal track records who are Members of Parliament (MPs) and Members of the Legislative Assembly (MLAs). So, I think a good journalistic frame for a young mind is to look at data in a holistic manner and have a fair criticism of any party. 

The final point of your last question was why a voter should vote for any party. One should vote bearing some points in mind, like whether the party, at least in its agenda statement, is speaking about the agenda of the voter, such as unemployment. The current government says that it has given 44 crore Pradhan Mantri Micro Units Development and Refinance Agency (PM-MUDRA) loans throughout the country. India has 26 crore families. If you look at 44 crore MUDRA loans to 26 crore families, there are two MUDRA loans per family. I see a lot of young minds on my screen. Just ask one another, does anyone know any one family where a youngster has got even one MUDRA loan? Now, how can a government say that the MUDRA loan is our way to tackle unemployment, and commit almost a fraudulent claim that we gave 44 crore loans? That is just one example. The second example of why voters are disenchanted by the BJP, is that they said Beti Bachao Beti Padhao. The irony is that the BJP backed the rapist of Bilkis Bano against the court verdict through its government in Gujarat. The party backs Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh. The Prime Minister stands on a stage and appeals to vote for Prajwal Revanna, the worst monster that one can hear of. When, from north to south and east to west, a party starts supporting monsters, then the daughters of India will be against that party, and it will not have a place to hide. The third is the price rise. The World Inequality Index Report says that out of roughly 100 crore adults that India has, roughly 10,000 individuals have an average wealth of 2,200 crores. Roughly 50 crore people have an average wealth, not income, of one lakh seventy-three thousand. This is the kind of situation in India. In this kind of situation, the price of a cylinder doubles in five years, and the price of petrol goes on to increase. Every inflationary thing, the price of milk, eggs, food, and vegetables, continues to go up, but the income does not rise. This government has been the most destructive in terms of income for the lower middle class and the poor. 

People will at least want the government to say that yes, the price rise is a challenge. It does not affect those ten thousand, but it affects the 50 crore whose average wealth, as per the World Equality Index report, is one lakh seventy-three thousand rupees. So, when the leader of this government does not discuss unemployment, does not discuss the issues of women's safety, and when he is asked specifically in an Aaj Tak interview about the inequality in India, the rich are becoming richer and the poor are becoming poorer. He laughs out loud and says, What do you think? Should I make everybody poor? This is not a response that people of India expect and accept. This is the challenge, and in the face of this challenge, voters are presented with an alternative as the Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance (INDIA), the SP, and the Congress. We will take initiatives to guarantee jobs for the youth, to fight price rise, and to recognise poverty. The poor families and the women will be given one lakh rupees. We will hold a caste census that will enable an x-ray of the society to understand who is being left behind and an analysis of what the factors are in somebody being left behind. People, at least, understand that these people are speaking about the issues that affect them, and we are not speaking about abstract rhetoric which makes one person look grand, but does not change people’s lives. This is the reason people are shifting their voting preference, and they are looking at Mr Akhilesh Yadav, his speeches, and his fast track record. We will humbly accept the decision that people make.

Sir, we are having our semester exams at the university, and there is something that struck me while I was doing my research for the interview. It is an article dated 30 June, 1994, published in India Today. We see a very interesting case. The Kalyan Singh government brought the anti-copying law to stop the practice of mass copying in schools during examinations. It was a non-bailable offence. Mr Rajnath Singh was the Education Minister at that point in UP. And, the very next year, the Mulayam Singh Yadav government came to power in the state, and it reversed this act. Since Mr Akhilesh Yadav is campaigning and standing with the affected students of paper leaks, it makes me wonder, does the Samajwadi Party have any proper approach to the issue? Or is it just another rhetoric being used, given the significance it was given by the Mulayam Singh government in 1994? Does the Samajwadi Party have any comprehensive approach to this? 

I think the Mulayam Singh government in 1994 was criticised in the past and continues to be criticised because of this measure. As far as the paper leak is concerned, it is robbing the future of the youth. The statistics that I gave you earlier show how poor an average family in India is. The same is the condition of household income. People really have to sacrifice a meal a day to ensure that their children at least get an education up to graduation, and the future and hard work of an entire generation are at stake when their children eventually appear for these exams. If the government engages in a systematic betrayal, where exam after exam is leaked, people have to spend more to prepare again for the same exams, and this also delays their admission and job opportunities.

As far as the solution to this is concerned, we are in the age of Artificial Intelligence (AI). The solution is not very difficult if the government is serious. There are different ways to approach the solution of the problem of paper leaks. The first and foremost is to ensure that there is more and more digitisation in the examination sector. We are in an age where cameras are available more easily, and we can keep an eye on the examination centres. Second, we can take the help of data analytics to understand the answering pattern in an online exam. A normal person will take random time gaps for each and every question, while a person with a leaked question will just run through the entire examination because they have the answers. The third is to have a track record of academic performance of the examinees. It is normal when one with a consistently outstanding academic record excels in these exams, but it is abnormal and concerning if too many students with a poor track record are outperforming in these exams. The technology has the ability to disrupt this entire process of malpractice in competitive examinations. One needs to ask oneself, am I electing a government that will ensure that good education and skill development ministers are in charge to make it happen? Our criticism of the current regime is that it is unserious about the education and employment of those who belong to the mass class.

You talked about the significance of integrating AI to make sure this problem does not occur if the Samajwadi Party is voted to power. But do you think these things could be implemented by the government? There are many stakeholders who keep suggesting different policies to the government regarding this, but they are often caught in the red tape of the bureaucratic system and cannot move further. Even the central government is hesitant on the issue. How efficient would it be to implement it? Do you think it is realistic?

The question is to take a step back and understand what politics is. Politics is a clash of interests to secure power. Why do people want to secure power? They want to secure power because they want their interests to override those of others. How does democracy play a role? Democracy plays a role by giving everyone a voice to participate in this clash of interests. This seems like a chaotic place, but this is the way society operates. Eventually, the voters decide which interest group they want to empower. That interest group, by political means, runs the government, with the voters keeping a tight hold on the government. If the government does not run on the voters’ aspirations, they dismiss them in the next election. 

Good politicians have their ideas, and they ensure that, no matter how long it takes, how hard it takes, their ideas shall prevail. So, I think that as a politician, you need to ensure that your ideas, especially those that are in the interest of people, are able to see the day of life. We have had politicians like this in the past, where their primary idea was to attain freedom, in post-independence India, where they worked upon the idea of building a livable country. Even in the current government, they have made several good measures. Creating an institution like the National Testing Agency (NTA) is a good measure to prevent exam leaks. No government aims to be evil. There are multiple good things that every government does. But, at some point in time, the government is not able to do what it wants to do and starts serving the interests of a certain section of society, ignoring the needs of the masses. 

While we talk of the education system, the fact that surprises me is that no single party in the opposition has made the discrepancies in the Common University Entrance Test (CUET) their political agenda. No particular party has taken any strong stand against the irrationality in the examination. Exam centres are changed at the last moment, computers stop working in the middle of the examination, and the wrong papers are being distributed. Even the Right to Information (RTI) is not responding well to the questions. Can we say that we do not have the representatives of students in the parliament of the country? Why are the mainstream media not bothered about the things that are concerning the students who are in the age group of seventeen to nineteen? Apart from 50-year-old youth leaders, do we also need some literal child activists with a pacifier in one hand and Johnson’s baby flag in another at the Jantar Mantar?

It is a very fair question, and it is very unfortunate that the CUET, which is taken by millions of students, is going through this situation and the NTA, which is a specialised agency to conduct these examinations, is not able to conduct it properly. The question is why it is not being taken seriously. If you go to trends.google.com and look at the key issues that the media takes up. You will realise that they look at the words like Hindu and Muslim. Let us understand it deeply. If you run a media channel and you are getting Television Rating Points (TRP) by playing out the Hindu-Muslim debate, why would you cover exams?

Systematically, this government has nudged the storyline of the media, which should report from the ground on day-to-day issues, towards issues that are abstract, that are rhetorical, that catch the eyeballs, and that dumb down the viewpoints of people. The dumbing down of mainstream media is the dumbing down of democracy, which is what this government is doing. When mainstream media is dumbed down, where else can a good debate happen? The other place for a good debate is the parliament. Do you know how many sittings of parliament have happened in the last ten years? There are more Sundays than the number of sittings in the last ten years. If a government decides that parliament will not meet, it will pass substantive laws without debate. Why are these MPs there? They are representative of roughly three million people or more, and their voices are not heard. As a result, the genuine issues are not picked up. This gives rise to activism by civil societies and self-defined activists. But again, the government starts clamping down on them.

Sir, do you think the opposition has no role in it? You mentioned the media and civil society, but where is the opposition on these things?

The opposition definitely has a role in it. It has two roles. One is a selfish role, where it has to ensure that it represents those who are not getting represented. As a government becomes unpopular, it will not represent the common people’s issues, and as a result, the opposition has a selfish motive to represent these issues. There is another role that the opposition has—to use the platforms of democracy, the parliament, the assemblies, and the media. When the government starts twisting these platforms, muzzling the voices of the people, then the opposition has a role in it. 

It is easy to say that the opposition is weak; it is not taking on the government, or it is not raising the issues that people want to be raised. But when you look at the fact that the mics are being turned off in the parliament, then you realise that we are in a different era. It requires a different method to raise the voices. 

I think the BJP is losing every narrative this time. It is because during the elections, the machinery is not entirely under the control of the government, the media is supposed to show multiple viewpoints, and social media is more open to various ideas. If you look at the advertisements or even the manifestos of opposition parties and those of the BJP, you will see a vast difference. It is because the BJP is used to speaking without any disturbance, while the opposition’s mic is turned off when they speak. So, the moment they get a mic that is turned on, they speak with great determination, greater force, and a stronger voice. 

However, your question is fantastic. As an opposition voice, I can say that the issue of the CUET is a miss on our part. Not only this, but there are multiple misses. The greatest miss that I regret is the fact that thousands of students attempt or commit suicide every year due to their frustration with getting past the education system. That is the greatest misfortune in a country like ours, which is a family-driven nation. Thousands of young lives are lost, but not enough politicians, not enough media outlets are saying that every lost life of a child has to be made a national campaign. This has to be a campaign that operates from the parliament, the street, and the media. But this is not happening, and it is regrettable. These are opportunities for future politicians, for people like you, who grow up and have different interests to represent. That is why politics is a dynamic field. The more representation that comes into it, the more young blood that comes into it, the more it will refine itself. 

So, what is your idea? Do you have any solution in mind regarding this? Let us say, you or any other politician from the Samajwadi Party is given a chance to speak in the parliament; will they raise this issue, which is not electorally beneficial in the Indian electoral setting?

I believe that for a leader across party lines, the poor filter is how attractive the issue is by political virtue. A good filter is how valuable this issue is towards my ability to lead. And if I see issues that can be solved, then it is my duty in my own interest to raise the issue and work for its solution. Speech is not a way to solve the issue; you will have to go a long way to be able to align the stakeholders and work on its solution. 

There are countless issues in India that need to be solved. Take, for instance, the drinking water problem. How many of us can afford a reverse osmosis (RO) for drinking water? Similarly, the issue of women's safety. As a male, I can easily travel across the country in a general class or sleeper. But if I have a daughter, who is 18 or 20 years old, can she travel just like any other boy? The answer is no. I will be concerned about her. This taking away of public space mobility from women is taking away an equal opportunity that they would have in their careers. So, there are countless important issues that politicians should pick up with sincerity and work on. 

Let us move to another topic, which is about the Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs). In 2017, the Election Commission of India (ECI) openly challenged the political parties and all other aggrieved members to hack the EVM—it was a hackathon. Nothing good came out for any of the parties. Yet, accusations still keep floating around the media and everywhere that the EVM is being hacked after the results are declared. So, if the INDI alliance loses the election by a margin that they did not expect, will the Samajwadi Party or other parties in the INDI alliance accept the mandate? Or, would the blame go to the EVMs?

The most expensive personal device that you may have is an iPhone. What is the biggest branding statement that the iPhone makes? It is their privacy. But even then, we saw that iPhones were hackable through the Pegasus spyware, so we cannot say that these devices are not hackable. And do you think the ECI was serious about the hackathon? The answer is no. India has the largest number of voters ever voting in this election. And three days before the announcement of the election, one election commissioner resigned. With already having one vacancy, we are now left with just one election commissioner out of three. Would you go into an election, which is the greatest election in the world, with just one election commissioner? And at the last minute, you will bring two election commissioners out of nowhere, who have no track record of being an election commissioner.

Let us come to the EVM. Is it hackable? For any electronic device, the more complicated you make it, the easier pathways you will create to hack it. We must create a more hack-proof, transparent, and satisfactory voting device to vote. Not just the EVMs. We went to court, and even the Association of Democratic Reforms (ADR) went to court and demanded that not only the percentage of voters, but also the total number of votes must be disclosed. If you tell me that seventy per cent of the votes have been polled, and you increase the total number of votes from a hundred to 120, the numbers are off automatically. So, the whole organ of the Election Commission needs to be transformed into a fairer and more transparent organisation.

Let us move to the last question. It might open Pandora’s box, but let us go ahead with it. Sir, how do you define secularism? What is secularism for the Samajwadi Party? Is it the separation of religion from political ideology? Or, is it appealing to just one or two sections of society? 

Why does my individual view matter when something is enshrined in the spirit of the Constitution? Right from the fundamental rights that it gives to the citizens of India, the constitution communicates the spirit of secularism. And then there are the norms of the government regarding it. Norms emerge from year to year as the heads of state conduct themselves. Some may say that I will not wear my religion on my sleeve because I am the head of the state, and I have to appear fair to everyone, no matter what religion they come from. Some may say that I will show my religion through my dress and conduct, irrespective of how others feel, because I am proud of my religion. We have adopted the model of unity in diversity. We must have a sense of respect for every religion. But you see, Mr Yogi Adityanath goes to a Doordarshan interview before the Uttar Pradesh Assembly election in 2022 and says that this election is ‘twenty versus eighty’. Why is it not hate speech? Similarly, the Prime Minister says that the opposition will give people’s Mangalsutra to the Ghushpathiyon, signifying the Muslims. 

Whether it is Mr Modi, the BJP, or the Samajwadi Party, everyone is bound by the same constitution. How we interpret it is how we live it. How are we living it? Are we, on a day-to-day basis, increasing the hate between the communities or strengthening the bond between the communities? Are we telling everyone that in India, you can practice your religion freely? Or are we saying that you have to endorse the idea that India has been a Hindu civilisation? That should be the starting point to discuss secularism. 

Sir, in 1990, Mulayam Singh Yadav ordered to openly shoot a crowd of unarmed Karsevaks, where around 56 Karsevaks died, and the SP had no regrets about this incident in 2017. Do you think that the current leadership has any change of stance on that particular incident?

The main part of the question is about the firing on the Karsevaks. Mr Nripendra Misra, who was elected as the chairman of Shri Ram Janmabhoomi Teertha Kshetra Trust and has also been a principal secretary to Prime Minister Modi, was asked this question: Who ordered the firing? He was the secretary to Mulayam Singh Yadav when the incident happened. He said that Mulayam Singh did not order the firing; the local administration took the decision on its own. If you read the book How Does the Prime Minister Decide by Ms Neerja Chowdhury, you will get a chronological account of what was happening in the central government led by Mr VP Singh, supported by the BJP. It is just a BJP rhetoric that Mulayam Singh Yadav ordered the firing. In fact, all three, the central government, the state government, and the local administration, had the responsibility, which was given to them by the court, to protect the structure. They had the responsibility to protect the structure from being demolished by people who were becoming unruly on a continuous basis.

Ends.