We want to bring equality in society: SP Spokesperson Ghanshyam Tiwari

'Politics revolves around the chemistry in the hinterland and the field', says Tiwari

Samajwadi Party (SP) Spokesperson Ghanshyam Tiwari co-founded the Harvard India Conference and Harvard India Student Group in 2011 as a student at the Harvard Kennedy School. He has worked for global organisations such as McKinsey and Intel. He tells Aditi Phadnis that SP may have lost the perception battle in the assembly elections but has succeeded in forging a political as well as social alliance in UP that will yield surprising electoral results. Edited excerpts:

Your party has just released its manifesto. Tell us a little bit about it

We are fighting the election with the clear understanding that Uttar Pradesh (UP) is at the centre of the Lok Sabha election 2019. We are mindful of the fact that we are fighting as part of an alliance, but we are still conscious that we are fighting as a party led by Akhilesh Yadav on the ethos of Dr Ram Manohar Lohia. The manifesto is a 16-page document and starts with a quote of Dr Lohia who used to say that caste will not go away from society but if we succeed in our social justice programme then the differences between caste will go away.

In that spirit, the manifesto starts with a note from Akhilesh Yadav where he specifically talks about the rising inequality in society and also, in a provocative manner, speaks about the caste equations behind the inequality: How 60 per cent of the wealth in our country belongs to 10 per cent, largely the upper castes; and how, with inflation, those who are poor continue to become poorer because the rise in their earnings is lower than the inflation rate in the country.

Against that background, we speak about the economics of social justice, which is about three things: upward social mobility; housing and the dignity that housing brings to the lives of the poor; and income for the poor.

In the part about income, we speak about the successful scheme that Samajwadi Party implemented — which was, pensions for elderly women. We want to scale it up and through the federal structure, would seek to implement it across the country so that elderly women get a pension of Rs 1,000 per month.

In addition we look at opportunities of wealth transfer instead of economic inequality clearly calling out the fact that 0.1 per cent of our nation has assets of over 2.5 crore and maybe the time has come to speak about wealth transfer through taxing the assets of the wealthy to transfer it to the poor through government intervention and various schemes of the government.

The third is housing. There we refer to our proven track record of providing housing with basic amenities and solar-powered electricity and electrical appliances.

All this sounds like the fruitless debate between potato chips and silicon chips. India wants silicon chips and you’re giving it potato chips. What are your policies for growth?

I don’t think so. Eventually, whether it is potato chips or silicon chips, the cornerstone of Samajwadi Party 2.0 is that you have to bring equality in society and prosperity in society, both via capital (which is infrastructure) and at the same time continue the process of social justice.

Where we want ourselves to be judged as a party is whether what we say is logical; whether it is do-able; and whether there is a track record of our doing these things.

If we go beyond this, we speak of the way the Bharatiya Janata Party is seeking to put nationalism — and their version of nationalism — down everyone’s throat. Our priority is the danger looming before India from unemployment. 60 per cent of our youth is under 30 and it is time to figure out do-able ways to employ the youth.

One figure is the government must fill at least one lakh vacancies in government jobs every year. That is the minimum that the government must do. At the same time, evaluating the services sector and examining which aspect of government does not provide services proportionate to the population. Do we have education that is proportionate to the population? The same goes for healthcare and other government services. Wherever there is a gap, we will use that to create employment…

Third, we are looking at ways in which education could be transformed to cater to people’s requirements in the local languages, it builds the esteem of the local youth; it facilitates their moving to cities if they have to, where they can find opportunities to stay in hostels which minimises their cost of living.

There is a sense that while there is a contract between the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) and SP, on the ground there is a fear among the BSP that while its votes might be seamlessly transferred to the SP, the reverse might not happen…

UP as a state is 75 per cent rural. Politics revolves around the chemistry in the hinterland and the field. When this talk started, it seemed like a good theoretical construct. But when it was tested in a snapshot in the Gorakhpur-Phulpur-Kairana elections where just before the elections Mayawati announced her support to the SP candidate, it was clear that people wanted these two forces of social justice to come together. That people voted in such large numbers without leaders campaigning extensively; without cadres exerting themselves too much… this was last year. We have had one year to strengthen the success of Gorakhpur and Phulpur and later Kairana and make it a broad-based alliance. We speak of the opportunities for the most marginalised. At the same time, we have a history of being together.

We also have a history of fighting with one another. But when you come together, you look at the bright side. In the early 1990s, when we came together, we were successful in preventing the BJP in its efforts to divide and polarise society. We want to repeat that.

We also think it is too arrogant of a political party to take full credit of an alliance. The fact on the ground is: UP has given everything to the BJP. We gave them 73 seats in Parliament, we gave them 325 MLAs, we gave them a flourishing majority in local body elections…yet BJP did not return enough to the people, so people are angry.

Anybody who feels weakened today for any reason — because he is an unemployed youth or she is a woman or he or she comes from a backward or Dalit community or a farmer who is not able to make ends meet — anybody who is deprived has turned against the BJP and wants to participate in change. They want the government to work for them.

But isn’t it true that Chief Minister Adityanath has been able to fix law and order. He is putting bad guys in prison which the SP regrettably was not able to do. In fact many of the bad guys were members of your cabinet. Farmers’ loans have been waived. It is an agricultural economy, as you say...

We have had an uphill battle of perception where we were able to bring in institutionalised and powerful systems like Dial 100 that broke the gap of access in law and order. If a poor person needed the help of the police, he could use caste neutral technology to access the help. Earlier when they went to the police station, they would neither get dignity nor a sense of protection. Dial 100 was a direct call line. That worked. Yet, we lost the perception battle.

We respect the view from the ground. We have worked to soften that view. At the same time, the way Adityanath has built this perception of being tough on law and order is by daily headlines in newspapers about encounters. But media has exposed these encounters. Many are very questionable. Families are still searching for answers about the circumstances in which their loved ones died. Police officials have been caught. Promotions after encounters… money, and rewards for including people in the list of encounters… all this points to a situation where the police is becoming trigger happy.

A headline that someone has been ‘encountered’ may lull in people, a false sense of security. But in the current Vidhan Sabha, out of the 325 MLAs that the BJP has, more than 100 have criminal charges against them — serious criminal charges. Adityanath himself has a track record that cannot be denied. So no matter how much he tries, I don’t think he can be a good advertisement for law and order.