 Hello. Sabha. Hi, Kishore. I will talk about Uthpal and my favourite topic of dawns. Yes. The dawns. The dawns. I know. I never had so much fun in covering politics as in covering dawns. And Uthpal knows more about them than any other reporter I know. Yeah. I am just taking my headphones. And you guys will have to kind of drive it. I know. I don't know dawns. I know actually terrorists. Yeah, I know. I know. But you said you would get the thing. Yeah. Okay. So how is this? What is the platform about? I mean, anyway, we won't go there. We'll get the introduction. Carry on. Right. Okay. I'll start then. Hi. I'm a shantar. And I'll just introduce the one vote project. So one vote is an initiative to examine a diverse set of inputs and perspectives regarding the introduction and evaluation of technology as part of elections. Actually, this was started to only look at blockchains, but now we've broadened it out. It began in May 2021. The project works with stakeholders in the electoral process to understand, present and discuss knowledge from various domains. Media communications, disability rights, citizen's rights, technology designs and constitutional powers about the platform. So one vote is hosted at has geek a platform for collaborations across practices surrounding technology, design, law, policy, systems, data and related topics. So how it works is we have all the content is generated by users and shared by the practitioners of whatever field it is. So far we have designed and hosted public deliberations looking at voter verification, electoral role, the duplication and several internet based voting activities. We've also written an interim report and just finished up with our first edition of an annual conference. What we aim to do here is enable participants to acquire foundational knowledge and perspectives to evaluate the intended and unintended consequences of technology interventions. And we want to focus on identity, equity, privacy, security rights, agency and the socio-economic impacts of such proposals. This series, as you know, is being done in collaboration with the Jindal School of Journalism and Communication. As for audience questions, if you wish to speak, please use the raise hand function and we'll call upon you. Alternatively, you could put your questions in the chat box on zoom or if you're joining us from the YouTube live stream, we'll be monitoring that chat as well. We welcome Sabar Nakvi and Uttapal Patak. Now I will hand this over to Professor. Thank you, Chantal and a very good evening from our afternoon from India. As you can understand from my attire, I am situated in a cold, bleak North Indian village, the Tehsil of Jagdishpur in Sonipat district where my university is located. And another election is upon us. Elections in India is almost like a wedding. It is huge in terms of science and logistics and the number of people who are involved in that. And joining me today as you mentioned is Sabar Nakvi and Uttapal Patak. Both have covered elections on the ground for several decades. Uttapal is an independent journalist based in Lucknow. Though I have encountered him in Benares, but I suppose he traverses the bad lands of Indians, you know, North Indian political strongholds. Sabar has some wonderful stories I know. But just to, before we get to the story, before we, I'd like to put a little, I mean, introduce it, introduce criminality. And then when we say criminality in politics, what are we exactly meaning? In today's show, we will touch upon other aspects of criminality, but we are trying to understand, we will be referring mostly about the criminals as we understand, as a layman would understand, criminals in politics, because that's a sense that most people have, that Indian politics are full of criminals. You know, Dr. Johnson famously said that patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel. In 2005, I think Ram Guha said that in India it is often the first refuge. But if we replace the word patriots with politics, it would still hold true. And nearly 43% of the new members of the lower house of the parliament have won elections with criminal facing criminal charges in the 2019 Lok Sabha. And in the 17th Lok Sabha, I mean, the number of people with criminal ministers with criminal cases out of 56 ministers, 39%, have declared criminal cases against themselves. Ministers with serious criminal offence, 29%. Ministers with cases related to attempts to murder. There is one Mr. Murali Dharan from Maharashtra, Rajasabha member of the BJP declared a case related to attempt of murder. And the list goes on. Now, just as we have, as I mentioned, the elections upon us in Uttar Pradesh, Punjab and Manipur, we know that a large number of candidates who are in the fray have criminal charges against them. Now, having criminal charges and being convicted of the crime are two different things I understand. But when they go to the people, why do people vote for these criminals? That is a question that we will try and understand in today's show. Because it is, people make light of it. It's almost like an obvious thing. Oh, you're in politics. You must be, you must be part of that nexus. But is it really something to be made light of? Is it something that we should accept? Is it something that is given? Perhaps not. It is perhaps the most critical of issues that face us today, that faces Indian democracy. And I'll take you back to 2014, the momentous year for Indian democracy with the coming of Narendra Modi, who had made two promises. His first speech sometime, I think in June 2013, when actually the election campaign kicked off, he had said, not temple but toilets. Well, today we know that several toilets have been built. But along with that, temples have been built as well, dividing the country, almost splitting the country in the middle. He had made one more promise. And I don't know how many of you remember that promise. He said that if he became Prime Minister, no accused, and I quote, no accused with criminal charges will dare to fight the polls. Who says this cleansing is not possible? And another statement Modi said with a sense of urgency, we have to do away with criminalization of politics and delivering more lectures won't help. I'm not sure that he, when he looks at his parliament, and when he looks at the candidates in the fray for his elections that he's fighting, will agree with himself. Sabha, if I may ask you to start with your favorite crime story in politics, and I know you met many of them, but which one would stand out? So, Uthpal and Kishloy, Uthpal hasn't probably met more than me also, because he lives right there. For me, it was outing, but anyway, on the issue of crime, so let's take it level by, you know, because there is so much money in politics now, way beyond the limits. That's one of the reasons why these, we are going to, Uthpal and I will talk about the obvious criminals, the so-called dawns, the muscle men, those who have kidnapping, murder, extortion, that kind of, the classic criminal dawn, dawn quote unquote figure of the Hindi heartland, which is what I'm familiar with in Bihar and in UP. But even as I get into that, let us understand that the biggest criminals, when it comes to politics are the people who are giving huge amounts of unaccounted wealth into politics, that's which you are going to deal with in a later program, you know, in a way that is a deeper rot which has set in, but let's just get to the story of why does the Hindi heartland, why has it produced so many dawn-like figures who have succeeded in politics? First, we are talking about two regions, which both states which have had limited industrial development, limited. Even though I would say UP is a better than Bihar in terms of urbanization, but you've had little ways to, you've had that kind of economic growth that you've seen in the west and in the south, it has not come to these areas. Number one. Number two, there is so much, there is a whole social hierarchy, which is the caste system, which plays out, this is for a sort of international kind of audience, am I right? Is it? So let me, let's just put the explanations here. The caste system, the caste hierarchies, the social inequalities are very much part of these regions. They are there elsewhere in India, but in a fundamental way, the way Tamil Nadu has moved on, for instance, after the Dravidha movement, this has not happened in the Hindi belt. You know, you have these social inequalities. So you have the phenomena of these criminals who are muscle men, who with henchmen and some are actually criminals, some are representatives of a caste or a community or just Robin Hood figures who get cases against them and then one section of society views them as criminals. So even within the dawns, there are distinctions here. I'm going to start out with the story of one guy who was definitely a criminal first, which is the story of arguably the most famous dawn who died recently just last year. A gentleman called Mohammad Shabuddin of the town of Sivan in Bihar. Mohammad Shabuddin has been an MP, member of parliament multiple times and he, so I not only I had encountered him during my political travels reporting on Bihar, but then I went on to write an essay about him. So I met him extensively a few times. So this was in a book which had new writings from India by published by Penguin and I wrote an essay called the Sahib of Sivan, which is what he was in those days. So just to very vividly describe the now, he was a criminal who then became a political sort of big, big, big in politics. And his, he began because he operated in an area where a lot of the left cutters of a group called the CPIML were threatening the landed, the landed communities over there. This is, this is about the social conflict, the feudal, the Thakur, the Bumiards, the sort of landed cast of Bihar. He gave protection to the landed people and he bumped off some of the cutter for which he would get paid in time. He did murder for hire. He did kidnappings for hire. In time he would just became stronger and stronger as his political network grew. He also got social support because he could get things done, you know. He got support from sections of society because he could get things done. Now the time that I went to Sivan, which would be in 2003, 2004, something like that when I met him extensively, he was supposed to be in jail. But he was actually occupying an entire floor of the Sivan hospital, which he had built. There was a stadium he had built. There was everything he had built. The cult, so I don't think that we have equivalents anywhere of the kind of dawn ship. Dawn ship is what I'm going to, that's Shah Boudin acquired, however briefly, in the town of Sivan. The shopkeepers, they used to keep his pictures in case his thugs come wrong and they get bumped off. So while I went to meet him, there was sort of, he was seated there. He was a tall, strapping, well-built, muscular guy. He spoke a little bit of English, Hindi. He was surrounded by his henchmen with guns in the middle of the hospital. And the first person who came to interview him, and it's all in my essay, who came to meet him was a policeman who came there for a particular transfer. Somebody else, some other bureaucratic figure came because they wanted admission for their daughter in Aligarh Muslim University. So this was very, it was like the Godfather kind of scenario. Take that into Bihar town. And, you know, he would hold for dispense favors and his guys would be there with the gun. So I was sitting in the sort of thing of a dawn in a hospital who should be in jail. So everything was being subverted over there. He was quite charming to me the first day, but the next day, what happened is, I went and I, when I left there, I went and met some of his political opponents. So the next day when I went back to meet him for more information, he knew that I had met them. So it was a town that was run by him. He knew and he was nasty and he was threatening. I mean, the psychopathic killer, easy murderer was back in the frame. You know, he was nasty and he was threatening. And there was a coldness and a sort of sinister thing. It was quite scary actually. It's like I just needed to get out of there. So that was the story of Shahbuddin. He was an absolute dawn. He ran a town. He built institutions in the town. He murdered people. He did kidnappings. He had a gang. They did things through extortion. The politician of the day, Mr. Lalu Prasad Yadav was scared of him. I heard the account from a DGP that Lalu once pretending, even though he represented Lalu Prasad Yadav's party, that Lalu once told him, it was a very well-known man called DGP Ojha, to somehow get him killed in an encounter. And when they went for an encounter, Shahbuddin escaped in a burqa and he crossed the border into Uttar Pradesh. It's a famous story of those days. And the DGP said that Lalu kept on calling him, calling him up saying, Margya, Margyasala, Margya, Margya ki nahi. And when he reappeared, Lalu went and stood next to him and grinned and said, my brother Shahbuddin. So do you get it? He escaped from that encounter, which the DGP says that this guy is wanting him bumped off actually because he didn't know what to do with him. He couldn't handle it, because he had some political clout by then. He was winning the Lok Sabha election. He was any one at multiple times, but then slowly over time, let's also recognize that in the end, regimes changed. Mr. Shahbuddin ended up in jail with no political patronage and he would die in jail. And with very, I have very little sympathy for him because I found him pretty scary actually. And I met other dons also. So, but I think let's go over to Uthpal who can sort of perhaps make the distinction between the criminal don who enters politics or the Robin Hood figure who is also described as Don. I think Uthpal would have a more nuanced, he would have a nuance of that. So maybe we can just get him into the conversation. Thanks, thanks Abba. Uthpal, who is today's Shahbuddin? Sir, I would never beg to differ to this, but yes, Shahbuddin is a big name, he was a big name in Bihar. He was the king of Sivan for a long, long time. He was a member of parliament. But in the later years, Ditesh Kumar tried to control him and even his wife, Hina Shahb, also lost the elections of assembly and she lost two elections simultaneously. So it was a message that the Don was no more a Don in front of the public. When it comes to UP, I would not, I'm not saying that I'm going to glamorize anyone in UP, but when it comes to Uttar Pradesh, there are people who are much bigger than Shahbuddin in all of this state. This is a big state. This is a state where around 20 crore people used to live. Before starting, before giving a picture of the criminal scenario of the state, I would like to present some data in front of you, which is recent data. So in 2022 elections, about only the first phase, the ADR Association for Democratic Reforms has come up with the data. Out of 615 candidates who were analyzed, 156 candidates, that means 25 to 26% of those candidates are criminal candidates. And 121 among those 156, about 20% of the total 615 candidates, they have serious criminal charges against them. So when it comes to serious criminal charges, it is related to murder. It is related to crime against women. It is related to extortion. It is related to handling a gang or whatever you can think of. It is related to liquor smuggling anything. Then we come to the list of the parties. Samajwadi party has given the highest number of tickets to the criminal candidates. They have given around 75% of tickets to criminals for the first phase. And out of them, 61% are serious cases against them. BJP has given 51% of tickets to criminals and 39% of them are serious criminals. RLD has given 59% of tickets to criminals and 52% of them are serious criminals. Indian National Congress has given 36% of tickets to the criminals and about 19% of them are serious cases against them. BSP, Mahavati's party has given around 24% of tickets to the criminal candidates and 29% of them are having serious cases against them. Amadbi party, who tend to be a cleaner party and they're also in the political battle of UP this year, they've also given tickets to around 15% of candidates who have criminal cases against them and 10% of them have serious cases against them. That's fine. Now let's start with UP and the crime. I don't know that the criminalization of politics in UP is the definition or the politicalization of crime is the definition. But yes, both of the things are coinciding each other since past three or four decades. It started in the early 80s or you can say it started after the era of the emergency. It started in the early 80s during the regime of Madam Srimati Indira Gandhi when she was the prime minister of this country. Congress tried to get some candidates with criminal background in elections and similarly this war in Gorakhpur started between Hari Shankar Tiwari and Viren Puthaap Shahi. Hari Shankar Tiwari was supposed to be the first person. You can call him a mafia. You can call him a big criminal. You can call him a Bahubali or whatever. He was the one who was the first known criminal who came into politics in the early 80s and then there were his opponents Viren Shahi and there were some more opponents who belong to the Rajput community of Gorakhpur region. They also came into the politics simultaneously and that's how it started. Then came this organized crime system which started changing their gears in the late 80s and by the early 90s you can calculate this was the same era when this Babri demolition took place and BJP also came to power. So BJP also started giving tickets to the criminal since the early 90s as well. And in the same era when Mulan Singh Yadav came up with this Samajwadi party and Kashi Ram came up with this Paujan Samaj party then the regional politics came in and all of these regional parties they were very eager to give tickets to the criminal criminals because the criminals have got their own clouds in their respective areas and the assembly elections particularly were more local elections. So all of these criminals were kind of a big help for every political party be it it is Congress or BJP, a national party like them or be it it is regional parties like BSP or SP. All of them were so eager to give tickets to the criminal candidates since the early 90s itself that in past three decades we have been seeing a lot of criminal candidates contesting in the various elections of Uttar Pradesh every year and going to parliament or the assembly buildings regularly. As far as this differentiation is concerned when we say about the criminal candidates there are two types of criminal candidates. One is the criminal candidate which comes from an organized mafia or an organized criminal background of a gang or a group or something and then there is an unorganized criminal who is into his own personal things and who has done his own crime which are of personal nature or subject to a particular area. But in UP the problem is that after every five kilometers you will find a small mafia or a bigger mafia or a bigger mafia than that mafia. This is a land of mafia goons. This is a land of gundas. This is a land of hooligans and this is a phenomenal affair which goes on every year. So elections come after every five years. But the cloud of the criminals, the power of the criminals is a thing which is an yearly affair because they are involved into local activities because they are also involved into the local festivals. They are also involved in the local body elections as well. They are involved in every activity which is related to the society. So that's how they enjoy the power and that's how they grow the power. Now it comes to this Robin Hood image or what you call as the hero worshipping of the criminal candidates. So like Sabha has said that a particular candidate like Mukhtaransari Mukhtaransari is in jail from past 25-23 odd years but he is termed as a Robin Hood candidate because despite his in jail he keeps on working for the people of his constituency. He keeps on asking for their health. He keeps on writing letters for their education for hospital services and what. So that's how he is considered as a Robin Hood candidate. They've got other Robin Hood candidates as well who are in jail or out of the jail but they are still trying to help people but they are also killing or doing some conspiracies or doing some criminal activities against any particular community. So a particular community might refer to them as criminals. But the way this Robin Hood politics is going on or the way this organized mafia politics is going on as far as like Sabha has explained you that Sabhuddin was in a hospital. You know in Uttar Pradesh a criminal staying in a hospital is a very regular scene. I'll tell you there was a case in Mumbai in the 90s. It was the J.J. Hospital case. It's a very known case where Dawood Ibrahim was also involved in that case. It was before the Bombay blast and before Dawood Ibrahim became a criminal. So there were people who went to the J.J. hospital to kill some shooters of the Arun Gawli gang in Mumbai and the people who went inside the J.J. Hospital were Brijesh Singh, Subhash Thakur and also Dawood Ibrahim. They killed the shooters of Arun Gawli in the hospitals and in the cross firing two cops were also killed in the J.J. Hospital case and all of these three people they jumped from the third floor of the building of that hospital and all of them got injured as well. Dawood Ibrahim after this incident got against Brijesh Singh and Subhash Thakur. He went on his own pace and he went on his own direction but Brijesh Singh and Subhash Thakur they kept doing crime. Brijesh Singh is a very big name in UP, Matthew Singh you can say. Brijesh Singh is now a BJP MLC and he's in jail. He's in jail from past say 10 years and he has contested from jail itself and he's a BJP MLC right now. Before him his wife was a BJP MLC because of him. His nephew Sushil Singh is a BJP MLA and he's a three times MLA now. Brijesh Singh is going to contest the MLC elections once again this year because UP is also having the MLC elections simultaneously with the MLA elections. So Brijesh is also going to contest the MLC elections this year and I'm sure he'll win very easily like the other years. After every 10 or 5 kilometers you'll find some new names everywhere. So for example in East UP after Brijesh Singh and Mukhtar Ansari you'll find names like Sushil Singh's nephew. You'll find names like Vinit Singh. In Gonda you'll find names like Brij Bushan Singh. In Gorakhpur you've got Harishankar Tiwari. In Akhbarpur you've got someone who was with BJP and now he's with SP. His name is Rakesh Pandey. Then in Sultanpur you'll find the two brothers Sonu Singh and Monu Singh, Chandrabath Singh and Veerbath Singh. In every district you'll find at least one, two or sometimes more than four and five mafias and there is no categorization of such mafias. So you cannot claim that there's a small mafia and there's a bigger mafia or who is the middle class mafia. They call a mafia is a mafia. So a mafia can be a corporator also. A mafia can be a member of parliament also. A mafia can be a member of legislative council or member of legislative assembly. The way the people support them is the biggest thing which can be seen as an example of social science or as an example of community based intersectional differences between different communities. Sometimes the people are supporting the mafia or the goon or the goon or the don because he belongs to their own community or the caste. Sometimes they support him because the mafia used to help them to fight against any other particular mafia or any other particular community. Sometimes they support them on other grounds say on the grounds of poverty or on the grounds of help what they used to get in terms of medical services or whatever they want to do. Going to the mafia and asking for help in any case. Not only the poor people are going to the mafia to ask for help. Like Sabha has said that she has seen a bureaucrat standing in front of Sahabuddin for admission of her daughter in his daughter in illegal Muslim university. That's a very common scene here. I can't say that I'll welcome you to jail, Prof. Kishle. But please come to Varanasi someday. I'll take you to the central jail. I'll make you sit with Brijesh Singh. He'll have a cup of tea with him inside the central jail and see what kind of people are coming to see him. Or I'll take you to Vinit Singh who is not in jail who lives in a big palatial mansion. But see what kind of people are going to see him. They are educated people also. They are bureaucrats also. There are doctors also. They have a lot of work. Someone needs admission. Someone needs a reservation somewhere. Someone needs a land to be cleared by a particular community. There are inter-community differences as well. So you cannot say that even the educated people are also associated with such mafias or goons and bundas. And they happily go and ask for help. And even these mafias or bundas happily help such educated people in order to say that One day Brijesh Singh very proudly told me when I went to see him inside the jail for an interview. He very proudly told me that the person sitting next to me is a doctor and the person who was sitting before me on the same chair was an engineer and he was an IT topper. Can you imagine someone who is an IT topper is also going inside the jail to meet Brijesh Singh or any other goon. I'll give you another example. Subhash Thakur nowadays is in the Fatehgar jail of Uttar Pradesh. But you will not find him regularly in the Fatehgar jail. You will find him in the BHU hospital, a private ward of BHU hospital after every month. And he stays for around 30 or 40 days regularly in each quarter. He comes on regularly to BHU hospital. 30 days, all the picnic happens inside the hospital. Everyone goes to see him. You'll find big cars, big SUVs and ex-QVs standing outside the hospital. People going to see him. People going to see him with sweets and garlands and whatever. And he's sitting there with six, seven cell phones and making up phone calls for various people. This is a very common thing. Just like Amarmani Tripati is also in jail for this Madhumita Shukla murder case. Madhumita Shukla was a poetess. And I'm sure you remember how she was murdered. Amarmani Tripati is also in jail. Amarmani is also doing the same thing in the jail hospital. He was also using the same cloud. He also came to the BHU hospital once upon a time. Now he's spending his time in some other hospital in Gorakhpur. Similarly, when there was no BJP government in UP, when there was Samajwadi Party government or the BSP government, it was very easy to meet Muktaran Sari inside the Ghazipur jail. I went to see the Ansari brothers in Ghazipur jail I guess in the year 2007. And that was the same day when Eid was announced. And I saw people from Ghazipur, Mahu, Banaras standing in queues in front of the Ghazipur jail. And they went inside the jail to greet him, greet both the Ansari brothers for Eid. And they wanted to seek their blessings. And they were serving everyone with Sevaya inside the jail. Can you imagine? Thousands of people who were coming inside the jail, they were being served with Sevaya inside the jail. No checking, nothing happened. Uthpal, I'll just ask you to hold on to these absolutely reverting stories that you have. Just to digress, not exactly digress, but ask Sabha this question or provoke her. That while criminalization in politics, criminals in politics, the long list that you've given, it's true for UP and actually true for all states. I mean, there is somehow such a deep rot where people with muscle power or with some form of influence are given tickets. Or if you're not, then you actually assume that power while being in politics. And politics and crime and criminality somehow become synonymous. And I'll again jog your and audience's memory of what the Prime Minister had said that I will dare anybody with criminal charges joining the politics. And what happened in UP was when Modi and Shah decided to make Kesha Chandra Maurya the president with a dozen criminal charges. He had charged to be put on a trial murder case, though he said that he was representing a people's protest movement. Kesha, I mean, the ruling party's president in the largest state was a criminal. But the one thing that the politicians probably are going to contest is that these are allegations and these are charges because our conviction rate in our country is so low. I think whatever numbers we are giving, not even a percentage of these numbers are convicted. So at the end of the day, theoretically, they can contest elections. But what I was trying to ask Sabha is that while we were talking about the traditional role of money and muscle in politics, we must also recognize criminalization that's derived from sustained ideological motives. I mean, even the brief history of Hindutva consolidation and the progressive recruitment of backward castes and Dalits and movements such as Ram Temple and our protection are very different from the traditional social bandit phenomenon. Do you feel that that is taking over the bandit phenomenon now? That's a very complicated question, but obviously many of the people who are at the forefront of Hindutva, including the Chief Minister, who had multiple cases on him. He was an MP for many years. He used to come to parliament, but they've all been withdrawn because most of them have vanished. Many ministers, I mean, the Home Minister of India after all has also faced criminal cases. There have been so many inquiries, you know. So all of, there are people, the most powerful people of the ruling establishment have faced criminal cases. I don't include the Prime Minister here because he has not. I include, you know, other figures. But I think the more, you know, so yes, there is that. But if you're to, there are multiple levels. I mean, you commit a crime, you become a criminal. But are we talking about criminalizing politics or the criminal mafias and we're looking at why that is so? I would just like to pull back into the sociological terrain in which we exist. When we talk of UPBR, I don't think you'll find so many, you might find people with criminal cases in Tamil Nadu, multiple, in everywhere. But are you going to find so many dawns? I doubt it somehow. I don't know. I could be wrong over here. What is, if you notice, many of the names that Uthpal has rattled off and I'm familiar with this, many of the dawns in the Bihar UP region, they tend to be Thakuris and Brahmins and Bhoomiars. Right, Uthpal? You know, so you have a very interesting, so we are talking about the dominant castes. The Savarna castes tend to be. You have example of Papu Yadav of Bihar, who was a Yadav dawn, and he was a Robin Hood, a true Robin Hood. You have a few Muslims, but mostly you'll find the gentleman called Dinesh Dubey who was murdered a year ago in a fascinating encounter. Vikas Dubey, sorry, sorry. I don't know why I keep saying Vikas Dubey who was murdered, Brahmin dawn. Today, parties have made efforts to get members of his family to stand in the Kanpur Bihar region. Congress, I think, has got some distant relative to stand. So there is a sociological question to be asked, what happens? What is the reason that has happened? I had once asked this to my great friend who died last year, an economist called Mr. Shailbal Gupta from an institution called Adri in Patna. So this is more in reference to Bihar than in terms to UP, and he said that these were all permanent settlement. They all came under the permanent settlement of the British Empire, the Bihar region, and bits of Eastern UP, up to you come to other than the land pattern is different. He said they all came from this. They were all big land collectors, debt collectors, and these guys were just collecting things. So in a way, what happens in the post-independence scenario, many of the upper caste, they still become this vision of a guy in a bike, a tough guy on a bike with another guy behind him with the gun, slung on his thing. This became common. So you may not have tax collection from the poor, but in their own way, these were people who came from strong caste. So there are complex sociological reasons for this. And I'm sure each one, the other, but the question to which I don't have an answer and I wonder about it is the question of incomes because I know, I would like to mention one great BJP don, Rajbhushan Charan Singh, Uthpal would know all about him. We have discussed him in the past, Uthpal and I. He is the president of the Wrestling Foundation of India currently, very appropriately. You should see a picture of him. I'll show it to you. So he's a wrestler and he describes himself as a social servant and a social worker and all of that. He's a mega don. He's a big don. And he's a BJP MP and he has had criminal cases where years ago he hid members of the Dawood Ibrahim gang. So please understand. There's no ideology involved here. He was with Samadwadi Party also. He was with Samadwadi Party also. And now he's with BJP. Luckily he's a member of parliament of the BJP. Mega, mega don. But he has many legitimate businesses also and I think Uthpal would be able to elaborate on that kind of thing. But to get back to the question of Hindutva, yes. If you look at it from the criminal, but they are not being treated as criminals right now within the terrain, right? You can have, you can have genocidal cases. You can lynch people. You can have riots, but you can still become a minister. Mr. Sanjeev Balyan, who is a minister in the center, MOS, he has cases against him from the Muzaffar Nagarites of 2013. So that is not the terrain. We are asking, does the system give people so little that this is what the system delivers in the end? So that's, I think, the larger question. So, yeah. I will often, when we discuss elections and having covered elections for all of us for several decades now, Kashmir and India's northeast really falls off the map. Though Kashmir does not fall off the map when talking about other things, but elections, yes. You know, the larger Indian so-called mainland has very little interest. Now, the kind of mafia dawn that you're talking about, now, when you move to those, move to the, from the bad lands to the border lands, assumes a different dimension altogether. I mean, you had a chief minister in Arunachal Sabesh, one of the longest serving chief minister who had thousands of crores. I mean, I think the largest scam that was still a few years back, that was accounted, was actually in Arunachal Sabesh and FCI, the Food Cooperation of India scam. You had Nagaland for years and years and Nagaland terrorist organizations ran it. I mean, it was their dictate that controlled everything. And we are not talking about the Qatar. We are not talking about Shahabuddin's henchmen. We are talking about guys who are well trained with snipers. We are talking about, we are talking about a full army of people, uniformed army of people who operate on, you know, say, say, Hebron, which was a camp of the NSC and IM, which continues to be the camp of the NSC and IM, now a legitimate camp of the NSC and IM and then not then banned one was 90 degrees perpendicular as the crow flies with the army's three corps and both agreed to live cohabit peacefully for years under a process called ceasefire. Now, the ceasefire is also a wonderful word because it allows you to carry on with everything that is against the law, but not get so. And somehow that got, you know, in a way taken over by the political class and the political class. So it's almost a seduction for politics to take the resort or go and field candidates with criminal backgrounds or with people with muscle or with money. And, you know, if we distinguish between the hardware and the software of democracy as Ram Guha explains, you know, by hardware, actually, you know, in political science or the political features that we may recognize what elections would be and whether a society is democratic or not. A is that in existence of multiple political parties. Do we have that? Yes. Free fair and regular elections whereby adult citizens vote to choose between candidates. Do we have on paper? I suppose we have pre fair in the sense that people key up and they are casting their vote and of course there are lots of complaints and then the election commissioner commission is supposed to look at it. There are some re-elections, repos, we know that happens. The freedom of the press, including the electronic media and I'll come to that in a little while. Do we have that? We believe we do, though I am a little skeptical now. Independent judiciary, yes, again on paper we have the freedom to live, work, own property anywhere in the country of which one is citizen so all these five parameters are full paper. We check the boxes of democracy. So where do we go wrong? I mean you have mentioned it, I'll just ask Uthpal to again reinforce what he said that why do political parties field these candidates? Why do citizens vote for that? You've mentioned this Uthpal, but if you can again explain it to the audience because I think that is the core of the discussion. Criminals will be there. Criminals are there, but why do we need criminals? Why does politics need criminals? Why do voters need criminals? I would answer to the letter password that why do voters vote for the criminals? The only reason why they vote for the criminals is because of the failure of the system, entire failure of the system, entire failure of everything which is related to the system. They vote for the criminals because the criminals are available for them for entire five years of the term of any government. One, two, the criminals are or the representatives of the criminals, they are available for the public at any hour of the day or any hour of the night. That's one, that's another point. Third and more important point is that they are able to help in any way possible which a policeman cannot do, which a lawyer cannot do, which a doctor cannot do. They can help you in getting your cases filed. They can help you in getting rebates and discounts in the bills of hospitals. They can help you in getting scholarships to your sons and daughters in schools. They can help you in getting other household things. They can also help you in giving you loans or getting you loans without any interest, especially in the cases of the marriage of the daughter or especially in the cases when someone or the family is ill or he needs a medical supervision in some good hospital. So the connectivity of the criminals with the voters is much better than the connectivity of the bureaucracy. It's much better than the connectivity of the judiciary and it's also sometimes it's much better than the connectivity of the media as well. I've seen people giving good quotes about being mafias just for the sake of one reason that they used to help them on year-long basis. I've seen people who are trying to oppose even the media to go inside a particular village because they don't want the media to write anything against a particular Goon or a particular mafia. That is the reason, the connectivity is the reason why all of the political parties want to give tickets to the criminals because they know that despite the political parties have got their own card or despite the political parties have got their own organizational setup or whatever but the connectivity with the public of the criminals is so strong that this card or the organizational structure cannot even think of such kind of connectivity. Whenever I meet, there's a person known as Shyam Narayan Singh Elias Vinit Singh. He was a DSP, a MLC for a long time. Now he has joined hands with BJP and he's also going to contest a MLC from the BJP ticket. That person remembers names of thousands of village of districts of Mirzapur, Chandali and Varanasi. Can you imagine thousands of villages? I mean he can just keep on mentioning names of villages and he can mention names of at least 20 to 50 people in every village of those areas. So that means he remembers around thousands of names of villages and thousands of names of people. During the marriage season, he, his wife, his son and his brother, four of them, they go out in four different cars to four different directions and they attend around 100 to 150 marriages in a day. I know this is a very hypothetical figure but they don't spend a lot of time in any marriage. They just go there for two minutes, give a particular amount of money or give a particular kind of gift to that area and then they go to the another spot. Can you imagine four members of a family are simultaneously attending 100 marriage parties in total per day during the marriage season and that happens in two, three districts of this area, entire area. So you can imagine the kind of connectivity what they have got. Can you ask any politician to recite names of 100 villages of his constituency? No, he cannot. He cannot even name 25 villages at a time but they can name 50 villages. They can name 100 villages at a time. And they can name thousands of people because they are more connected to them. And the connectivity is a year long thing. It is not that election aagya to chalo ab logose milte it's not that they are going to meet people only during the times of elections. They used to meet them regularly. That's a regular phenomena. If the gun or the mafia is not in his respective constituency if he has gone to Delhi or to Lucknow to attend the sessions, then their representatives would meet the people there. They have appointed representatives. Is it inevitable then that criminals or muscle men or people who have a strong connect with their voters with this kind of background will continue to rule the roost? I mean they will be our lawmakers. Is there no way out of this? I don't think there's a way out of this especially for the next 15-20 years in a state like UP and Bihar because the way the system deals with the people's problems the way the bureaucracy deals with the people's problems I mean the people do not find themselves more connected with the bureaucracy or with the government or with the officers in any way. Rather they find these criminals to be more comparatively more supportive in any other ways as compared to the government officers or any other bureaucrats or any other people who are sitting in any capacity of any government derived profile. So I don't think it is going to end in the next 15-20 years because the people themselves also they think say I regularly give an example that you do a birthday party of a kid in your ghetto and call up five professors or call up five educated people. No one will give a damn to that party. No one will take that party seriously because you have called up some educated or elite people. Call one mafia. Call two mafias or one mafia from the entire region. And see even the people from the nearby ghettos and muharilas they'll come to see and say hello and good morning and good afternoon for the next day. Okay. I mean we have actually we are running out of time so I'll have to take a few questions also. Sabha quickly would you agree or do you think that the media and other hardwares of democracy are also now part of this nexus? I agree on the ground with what Utpal is saying. This is how it works. Some of the language that we use is not adequate for people who don't understand the reality of the ground to understand what is actually happening. Can you imagine a poor guy who has to get something out of a government office? I mean just imagine. Imagine the nightmare that then unfolds. The downside of this mafia kind of thing is the question of law and order. What is law and order in this election? The point is will the mafia's henchmen go and harass shopkeepers? Will it make it difficult for people to work at night? These are the issues, you know also. So on the one hand some of them, not all of them, it depends on what kind of you also have signed mafia of UP bumping of journalists. Some of the data that makes UP one of the most that makes India one of the most dangerous countries for journalists. You have these mafia bumping of local level reporters and all that. One has heard stories like that, I don't know. I was asking you Sabha, is the media today also part of this nexus? The media is also criminalized. Yeah, it's criminal, this stuff the media does. I'm not saying mafia runs it but the media spreads hate. The media is there to extract. It often acts as a blackmailing vehicle. Local media, we all know there are stories that you go somewhere and you threaten to do a story unless some local person gives you a payoff. And this is not just UP in Bihar. Some of the worst such stories will come out of a state such as Punjab. Those who have worked on paid news and all of this. And then you look at the content that media is producing today. Legacy media is producing that content. They just are ready. Is it not crime that you take government advertisements and so you produce toxic content? To me that's criminality which is actually more damaging for society. So this is, it's a deserving time and these are very complex themes. So we should expand it here. I'm asking the audience to please either raise your hand or ask questions out here while we discuss because we actually we've discussed criminality and politics for almost an hour now. So we need a little bit of participation from, there is someone called DG who has asked the question how can we see the same issues of criminalization in politics in Punjab politics? I mean, yeah, since we did not, we discussed a lot of UP. I mentioned about Arunachal Padesh. I haven't touched Manipur actually. The sitting chief minister, Biren Singh who was a former journalist and a former acquaintance as well claims to have the largest collection of guns and his son actually took picked up one of those guns and killed someone and probably is out on bail now. And the moment there is, you know, militancy or insurgency or terrorism in a place, then the situation becomes far more complicated because it's a gun culture out there that, you know, it's gun and gun. Another situation that people often don't understand, the bigger picture in those borderlands is a combination of narcotics, gun running, fake currency, a racket, all that stuff. And part of the establishment is involved in that and there is enough evidence to corroborate that as well. So I mean, the rot is so, so, so deep that really I would hate to admit but it seems like we are not getting out of this rot anytime soon. But Saba, anything about Punjab, this is the question. No, I think Punjab, absolutely you answered the question but as I said to you, I discovered not this election, last time I had traveled in Punjab, during the same assembly election where I, it was revealed to me by people that the paid news phenomena, which is a criminal press, if you were a local candidate, you want some publicity somewhere, it is at, of the criminal level of extortion of the media over there. Some candidates only telling me, you think the rates in Punjab, they're very high. So there is a certain criminality which is seeped in our society, which is seeped in our system. Who are we in the media to go around calling X, Y and Z criminals when some of the conduct of our own media is borderline, you are getting paid by somebody so you do their job for them. Isn't that what is happening sometimes? You are getting your revenue from a particular regime so you do the ideological job for the particular regime. I mean, that's what's happening with sections of the media. So that's a complete, it may not be legally a crime, what they're doing, but it's a complete subversion of anything that media is supposed to represent or stand for, any value. So you have a debasement of values across the board and you have given so little to the poor, they have no way of negotiating the system. So that is why some of these criminals help them negotiate the system. That is what was elaborated for you. In fact, in Kashmir when elections are fought, used to be fought, I remember the Ikhwan or the surrendered militants again, were used. They were used openly by the army, they were used openly by the political parties. The army used Ikhwan to elect surpunches and if you remember there was a series of surpunch assassinations and killings by the militant outfits because they would have their own people, they would actually make an Ikhwan a surpunch so that they could then have influence over that area. I mean it was debasement of the worst level. I mean many of the hardware that I mentioned of politics of a democratic country don't actually exist, I mean they exist on paper but they actually don't exist on ground and both of you have given these wonderful stories and not wonderful but terrible stories but very riveting. There's another question. It seems like a paradox on Uttar Pradesh that there are criminals who get tickets in politics and yet the Uttar Pradesh government counts as one of its achievements, increasing incidents of police encounters on strong stand against criminals. I'll answer to this question. You can also see the chat box I think. Are the voters convinced that Yogi is tough on crimes and criminals and yet they may vote for criminals? Yes Uttar, this is a tailor made for you. First of all, this entire data scenario of how they have done this crime control in the past four and a half years. Most of the criminals who have been killed or encountered or killed in encounters or who have been put into jail, they belong to particular communities first. Secondly, there are criminals like Dhananjaseen who have got a reward of 25,000 rupees on their head. Dhananjaseen is also a former member of parliament from BSP. He's also a former MLA from BSP. He is playing cricket. His videos are everywhere playing cricket. His videos are everywhere going to puja and doing a lot more things. He has a reward of 25,000 rupees on his head but nothing has been done against him. Criminals of a particular community, especially the community which is the community of the chief minister also, they were not neither hanged, they were neither attacked or they were neither arrested in any of the crimes what they have done in past or any of the crimes what they have done in past four and a half years. This, the data which the UP government is always coming up and showing that we are trying to control the crime. It's only against most of the communities say for example like Muslims, Yadavs and the Brahmins as well. Is it what you call as a crime control? Is it something which is transparent which looks transparent to you that looking at few particular communities through a different eye and looking at the community of the chief minister through a different eye? As far as the people are concerned, I mean one should go to the ground one should go to the villages in UP and ask that what kind of criminals were nabbed by the police? Are the big criminals still in jail or if they are in jail? Are they being treated like a regular criminal? No, they are not. They are treated like VIPs. So the data which is coming out of the Excel switch is something else and the data which is coming from the ground is something else. That's the biggest problem in UP. Also, I think maybe Uthpal would be able to answer this that our popular TV channels are French media owned and controlled by popular criminal political leaders in UP. No, I don't think any of the TV channels or the regional media houses are owned by or controlled by any of the criminals or any other mafia or dogs. But yes, some of the senior journalists also or some of the senior editors also would not name anyone. But some people sitting in the state capitals or Lucknow and Patna, especially in the states of North India they tend to give some leverage to particular criminals or they tend to give leverage to some criminals who belong to their own caste. Casteism is the biggest problem everywhere in UP politics and that problem has also infested the media of Uttar Pradesh as well. And as far as this killing of people is concerned, CPJ Committee for Protection of Journalists has given the data that five journalists have been killed in India this last year. That's the highest number across the world and out of that five, one was from Uttar Pradesh, Raman Kashyap, who was killed in the Lakhimpur Kiri incident and Siddique Company is in jail because of UP incident as well. So this government has also put a lot of journalists in jail. They've also put a lot of FIRs on the journalists as well. So I will never say that this government is very good towards the journalists also as far as the state government is concerned. But yes, there's no case or there's no subject, there's no evidence of any criminal or criminal politician holding up the media or controlling the media or owning the media in the state by far. But politicians controlling the, what do you call it, media is very common in many other states. I mean, starting with Andhra Pradesh and it also had Andhra Pradesh or even, I mean, the current Chief Minister of Assam, Hemant Abhiswara Sarma who had a murder case against him when he was a student leader and once I remember him picking up the phone and telling me, are you going to hold me responsible for something that I did when I was 18 years old? Well, I said, but the law of the land does, you know, holds you responsible. See, that's what I'm trying to say. They don't try to enjoy certain pride in being criminals. Yeah, and he owned a TV channel which he still runs. The most strongest or the most popular TV channel out there is owned by him. And that became also the norm. I mean, the whole idea that, you know, that media should be independent, judiciary should be independent. I mean, all these democratic must have now been challenged. In Uttar Pradesh, the criminals and the mafias, they try to control the media of their particular district. Say, for example, in Gonda, you cannot ask any local media person to say anything against pre-bushan celency. Say, for example, in Varanasi, no one would speak anything against Brejesh Singh. Similarly, in other districts as well. Saba, there's a question for you. I think you could take this read as asking, what does criminals acting as legislators mean for us? Is this our collective failure of the society? I think so. I think that's fairly self-evident. It does. It reveals our... It reveals, I think, failure at multiple levels, that of the bureaucracy to listen to people, that of the criminal justice system, that of our politics, that of our fundraising in politics, that of... It is embedded in our overall... In the failure of the way our democracy functions, because we can certainly say we have an electoral democracy. But yes, we are not able to... You know, basically the story that comes out from what we are all saying, is that many of the criminals are more representative of the people than non-criminals are. That's what Utpal is telling you that. Then the bureaucrats are. So it's a tragedy, but it is what it is. You know? Ishaan has raised his hand. Ishaan, do you want to... Yes, sorry. I did not think that I could type this question because it is so not formulated properly. But from what, Utpal and Saba has been saying, it has been absolutely fascinating. I was just... And it's a provocative question in some ways. Does it really make sense for us to speak about these criminals in the trope of a tragedy as we seem to be doing? Because it seems to be... They seem to be doing exactly the things that politicians are supposed to do. The bureaucrats are supposed to be doing. They should help out people to get stuff and that kind of thing. I think it seems to me that policemen, instead of arresting these criminals, should actually learn from them and do what they are doing, isn't it? So I mean, in some ways it seems to me that there is no contradiction between democracy and criminality at the end of it. It seems that criminality, in fact, is the only reason why democracy exists. Why some amount of democratic redistribution exists. That people are being able to get things done. Poor people who will be lost in a bureaucratic office is being able to get the goals that rightfully belongs to them. And it is happening because of criminals. So rather than talking lofty, moral terms of lamenting the decline of democracy, it seems that democracy in India is surviving today because of what they are doing. I mean, it's just an open question. I guess the other some factual things that I was really interested in, I look at criminal gangs in the colonial period in Calcutta, actually. So is my understanding correct that most of these criminals as Sabha was saying are upper-caste? Yeah. And do we have stories of how they become criminals? What actually, yeah. And are there women criminals? Because in Calcutta, we have a few women goondas. So are there women criminals in UP as well? Thank you. Uttar will answer ultimately, but I think you've had a very fascinating response to this, Ishan. So thank you for that. Even I wonder sometimes who's a criminal and who's not. Is it a criminal thing to not serve the people? I mean, is it not a violation of the basic principles of democracy and your work of office if you're not helping people out? So I think part of this, you'll find the politicians with criminal charges also, some of them who have left the BJP because the complaint was that our work was not getting done because nobody was listening to us. They only listened to the Chief Minister and his bureaucrats. One of the complaints is as simple as that. I don't think Uttar will contradict what I'm saying here. So that you have the facility to do work if you are a criminal who is on the right side of the regime. But where it becomes problematic, we are seeing a system of vigilantes also. You bump off your rivals. You bump off your caste people will come to you. A lot of this criminality that we are seeing also works on the basis of caste. So I have always, please note that all these UP and Bihar is full of Brahmin and Thakur and Bhoomiya are criminals. Where is the, where is the Dalit? You'll find some Dalit bandits in Bundelkhand in the Bundelkhand part, but you don't find a Dalit dawn. You'll find Muslim dawn. You've had that phenomena. You've had this very famous guy called Papu Yadav. So you've had a Yadav, the dawn in Bihar. But mostly, mostly given the percentage, it is Thakur's and Brahmin's and Bhoomiya's in the bad news. Sorry, they work with OBC and politicians. Yes, yes, they do. They do. They do. Because they know. History of lower caste governments, right? Yes, yes, they do. They do. Certainly they do. And I think Uttar can elaborate on that because he's got, he's really good on this thing. So, you know, yeah. Ishaan, let's accept to the fact that the Netas are always known because of the Janta voting for them. Am I audible Ishaan? Are you getting me? Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So that's the fact that the Netas are always known by the Janta. I mean, the public is what they make them the Neta. Give me an example. Say, for example, if one of your friends or anyone whom you know needs some help in a hospital or he needs five units of blood at midnight. He met an accident and he met. What would you do? You'll ask your friends. You'll ask your neighbors. You'll ask people within your vicinity. And if you're not getting any help and if you are in Uttar Pradesh and if you try and ask help from a mafia, you just have to make one single phone call and you'll get 10 units of blood or 10 donors standing in front of your door within five or 10 minutes. Why? Because not because people are fearing because he's more connected to people because since he has given order to them, since people would always, you know, accept his orders or since people will always accept his order in order to get more closer to him. That's the scenario. Otherwise, you go to a blood bank. Otherwise, you go to a doctor or a bureaucrat and see what is happening. Uthpal, I'm sorry to interrupt you because we have very little time. I am just paraphrasing Ishaan's question and distilling it to one which interests me. Is that why do, why is it that the upper caste and the Thakur and the Bhoomiyaans become dons? Sir, in UP, not even, not only the Sabha is always right, but in UP, we have also seen Yadav dons as well. We have also seen dons from other communities as well. Whenever some lower people from the lowly caste, from the Dalit community, they want to become dons, the upper caste people will never let them come at that level, what the level they are in. So that's a caste discrimination as well. But we cannot say that we only have upper caste dons in UP. We do have Yadav dons. We do have dons from other communities as well. Similarly, the upper caste, even in the BSP regime as well, Mayavati's regime is said to be the best regime in terms of law and order in Uttar Pradesh in past 20, 25 years. But even if she belonged to a Dalit community and it was a Dalit government, but most of the upper caste goons and most of the upper caste mafias were with Mayavati at that time as well. And during that regime, even the Yadav mafias like Ramakanth Yadav and Umakanth Yadav were also, both of these brothers were members from BSP, from two different seats of Azamgarh. Can you imagine that? Two brothers, both of them having more than 35 criminal cases against them and both of them were Yadavs and both of them were member of parliament from BSP. So this is the social engineering what they call, but the social engineering fails up when it comes to a man-to-man engineering, when it comes to a community-based engineering or when it comes to a engineering which is connected to a whole lot of people where you've got OBCs, MBCs, upper caste Dalits and everyone. So that's how the mafia word comes in place and that's how the connectivity of the mafia words come in place. That's how they show their might that how much connected they are. They'll call up someone in an OBC community and the votes are done. They'll call up someone in an MBC or EBC community and the votes are managed or regularized. That's how they play, that's how they work and that's where the governments fail and that's where the political parties fail. I think I just like to add that there is no doubt that Dalits don't become dawns. It's compared to the numbers in the percentage of the population. I would like to say this as well that it is a way of getting their clouds back after the Mandalira or even in running with them. You have so many Brahmin dawns. Brahmins are supposed to be the people who peruse the Shastras and give you high thinking. You're peaceful of Brahmin dawns. Bihar is full of Brahmin dawns. And so compared to the numerical thing, you still do not have Dalit dawns. So there is a sociological element to it. You have some Yadav dawns because they are in parts a very dominant peasant community. And they are a martial community. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Martial I don't know but they're a strong vocal peasant community. So there's phenomena but it's preponderous of Dalits and Thakurs. In the world of dawns, we have to know that. And there are a few Muslims who always get a high profile because the BJP entire media ecosystem says as if only they are the criminals. So that is true but it's really Thakurs and Brahmins. But can we agree on that? I think it's an important point to focus on. Right now we have got most number of Dalit dawns. I will of course continue to remind you and the audience that there is an India beyond UP and Bihar and the dawns out there are not Brahmins or Dalits. They are all huge. That's because I think we have as Uthpal was saying that we have failed. So clearly we have failed. So we can make a case for saying that we are trying or India is still a young democracy. And that's why I don't think so. Any of that is going to work. Just before I finish off, just to give you an example of what Ishaan was saying. Two examples Ishaan I'm going to tell you. There was this actually the most powerful of the underground groups in India. And one of the oldest actually without a split was a group called UNLF. UNLF is a group called UNLF in Manitpur. UNLF was headed by a man called Megan now behind jail. Megan did comparative literature from Jadapuri University. And he came up when he saw that his carers and his popular support was waning. He came up with a wonderful experiment, a social experiment called Funga Maru. What he did with Funga Maru is all that he did was go went to the social welfare department of the government. Found out the number of people who had applied for small loans, 5,000 rupees, 10,000 rupees, 20,000 rupees were denied. Obviously they would be denied because we are the whole bureaucratic process is so slow and so glacial. He picked up those names. He sent his men and they went and gave little loans, which all loans with without an interest free loan that was given. And people took those loans and they became part of this Funga Maru. I mean till it was busted, he was creating a and what he was doing obviously was supposed to be done by the by the government, by the elected government. There was a, I think a report, the Carnegie, the report of 2017 before the 2019 election that was I think came out. That report clearly states that the criminality that we see that we've been talking about today is because of people's lack of trust in the state's institution. And that lack of trust in the state's institution creates space. In 2012, I remember speaking to Subya Sachi Panda in the forest of Kannamal, the Maoist commander, and the condition that he had laid 14 conditions for release of two Italian hostages, one of them whom he handed over to me and for whatever reason, but he held back the other one released him 10 days later. But those 14 points were completely democratic. There was nothing undemocratic or illegal in those 14 demands. Those 14 demands were about water coming to some villages, you know, paving of roads, et cetera, et cetera. I mean, there wasn't any, and those are the same demands that I figured out was the main, not demand that was was presented to the cabinet. During Indira Gandhi's time, similar stuff. I mean, these are what as Uthvala Niu said that the criminals are letting the people have, but of course that does not justify the criminals that justify the deteriorating law and order that we see the gun culture. I don't know where, how, when this is going to end. I think there is a one last question where we have to stop. Is Chandra Deep, Chandra Deep, do you have a question? I mean, if no one has any question I would like to ask, which is not. We are running out of time and we must stop. Like, yeah, yesterday or before yesterday, Telangana chief minister has made a comment on constitution said he is, he says, constitution must be rewritten or need to draft again. Like what your comments on it, can we consider this as a political stunt to, I mean, recently he's meeting all the regional parties like Stalin and other big women. What's your comment on it? I mean, it's shocking. The constitution is one of the best things we have. So I'm sorry, because our constitution is, is absolutely, it's a marvel. And it's application. It's like everybody pays lip service to it, but not in reality. So I would say that I would be very unhappy with anyone who wants to change our constitution. Thank you so much. Thank you so much. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you everyone for participating. I want to thank my researcher Someda Maheshwari, our student, who gave me the questions and the facts and figures. I'm handing this over to Chantal from Hasgeek and one vote, who will tell you about the other episodes that we have as part of this three part series on fight for democracy. Okay, a collaboration between one vote Hasgeek and Jindal School of Journalism and Communication. Thanks Sabha and thank you once again. Thank you so much. I think Chantal has something to say. Thanks. Thanks everyone for being here. So our next session is on data and elections. It's on the 8th of February, 4pm, and we will have Roshan Kishore and Govind Raj Etiraj. Yeah, that's it. Thank you. Thank you.