There have been more Sundays than working days in Parliament: Ghanshyam Tiwari

Coming down heavily on the ruling government for “skipping parliament sessions”, Ghanshyam Tiwari, national spokesperson of Samajwadi Party, has said that there have been “more Sundays than working days in parliament”.  

“If you look at the track record of the current NDA parliament, never ever in India’s history has the parliament sat for fewer days in any seven years than in these seven years. There have been more Sundays in these seven years than the number of sittings of the parliament, and yet they say they stand up for the country and its institutions,” said Tiwari while speaking to Kailashnath Adhikari, MD, Governance Now.

Tiwari was speaking at a live webcast held as part of Visionary Talk series organised by the public policy and governance analysis platform. 

Tiwari alleged that the “government has played a complete fraud on people” and said that it will build a new parliament building when it has hardly had any sittings.

He also castigated the media for becoming a tool for propaganda. “Unlike anywhere in the world, media has become a communal machinery to propagate hatred.”

Tiwari said that with more tools and technology available as compared to any other time earlier, if the government really wants to do any progress, the time is now. “If the government wants to improve public health infrastructure and agriculture, there is more data available now than it was available at any other point in time. There are drones, GIS mapping analytics through which you can build up predictive analysis on various stretches of fields to come out with bands of farmers’ income.”

The Samajwadi Party leader added that “BJP has the largest political capital and groundforce working for them, be it fake news network or propaganda network”. He said that UP CM Yogi Adityanath recently went on record to say that Tablighi Markaz had pledged to propagate the virus.

“You will not find such Nazi-like behaviour anywhere in the world, especially when we are going through a pandemic. All they must do is: With a good heart, say that India must enter 21st century with a force of truth and force of harmony rather than the evil of propaganda and hatred. The day BJP decides to do it, we will see our GDP growth improve and we will not be called lapdogs of corporates but real leaders .Till that time, people like us have to tell facts,” said Tiwari.          

Tiwari, who has worked with global organisations like Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Intel and McKinsey &Company, called upon the youth of the country to sharpen their ICT (information, communication, technology) skills and said  that the common man must decide that 21st century belongs to India and our youth should be able to work on their acumen and educate themselves better, understand how the ICT works and at the same time work on their acumen to distil good information from bad and enhance their knowledge base.

He cited the example of his own start-up and said that it is a community of 5,50,000 students in 600 districts with only 50 people running the show.

“No government ever has had an opportunity to educate its people. If the government is inclined, it can educate each and every child, woman and adult in a period of 2 years at only 1/10th of the cost,” he added.