 Hello and welcome to NewsClick. I am Paranjoy Guha Thakurtha and with me is Dr. Shashi Tharoor. Dr. Tharoor is a three-time Lok Sabha Member of Parliament from Thiruvananthapuram. He is Chairman of the Parliamentary Standing Committee for Information Technology. He spent nearly three decades in the United Nations as Under-Secretary-General to Kofi Annan when he was the Secretary-General. He ran for the post of Secretary-General in 2006. He didn't make it. He turned to politics. Thank you, Shashi, for giving me your time. Thank you, sir. Good to be with you. Okay. Now, the rest of the world knows what you used to call me when we were in college, but be that as it may. Oh, it's us. And I'm going to call you Paranjoy. Of course you must. But be that as it may. You know, I understand that as the head of the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Information Technology, you are bound by certain, you know, you can't, you know, Yeah, there are some issues that are before the committee, which we don't want to talk about publicly, until the committee has submitted its report. That's the usual. But the whole series of issues, one is, of course, Facebook or the misuse of Facebook. Then we have issues like how various trolls, various applications, apps are being misused to target people. We also have the Pegasus spyware. And you know I'm one of the victims. Is the committee going to deal with all these issues? Well, on the Facebook issue, we have ongoing testimony. Facebook has appeared before us half a dozen times already. And it will continue. The number of members have had strong questions of Facebook. Again, committee rules being what they are. I can't really go into the details of testimony until the committee report is written, which I think will happen in the course of this year. I don't think we can. Obviously the issues are perennial, but we have to submit a report after so many hearings on the matter. I would simply say that there is genuine concern on the part of members about the nature and role of some of these large mega social media sites, which began providing use for public service, but have now created enormous complications in the lives of users. And one could argue in the public life of the societies in which they operate. Beyond that, I won't be able to enter. I asked you whether you're going to look into issues. We are looking into all of the issues you mentioned. So that's on that one. Pegasus. On the question of the offensive sites like the so-called bullie buy and solely deals and all this nonsense. We have already, I have written as chairman to the ministry and the ministry has replied, very factual reply saying that they have taken very prompt action to bring these sites down and that clearly they are infringement of national laws. So I don't know whether the committee will feel any necessary to go into a discussion on the matter because you know, our job is to hold the government accountable. Here the government and all members will be on the same page, which is that this was a disgraceful thing that was done. It was a criminal thing that was done and the government and the local authorities have taken prompt action. On Pegasus the committee did discuss it on three occasions and it has been inconclusive in that in that the very first occasion was way back in 2019 when there was the famous WhatsApp breach when the Pegasus people exploited a loophole on WhatsApp to infiltrate their software into a number of phones of activists who wrote to the committee asking to be heard and on that basis I invited them. We had a huge row in the committee at that time, which is I'm not revealing anything because it's already all over the media. Shashi everybody knows that within your committee. That's right. They meet deep divisions, they meet deep differences of opinion, which is why there's a considerable amount of skepticism whether you will going to get a report which will have any degree of consensus or unanimity. That's precisely the problem, you're quite right to point that out. In the case of the Pegasus issue there was actually a two and a half hour debate within the committee as to whether to hear the witnesses who are waiting outside the room. And it finally came to an unprecedented vote in which I was able to prevail by using my casting waters gem and as a result the committee did hear the witnesses and so on record we have some testimony from victims as well as from the ministry officials who testified but who are unable to confirm or deny whether Pegasus had been used. Then two years later of course we had the other revelation when people such as yourself were proven to have been contaminated, had your phones contaminated. That is what a forensic examination of my phone and other phones by a laboratory in Canada, in Toronto Canada. And I was again briefed about this just about a day before it became public and I was able to look into the matter and then indeed tried to summon the secretaries of the ministry's concerned to testify. We did have a rather extraordinary phenomenon in which the three secretaries actually bailed out of a meeting that they had been committed to for ten days at the very last minute in a sort of synchronized maneuver. And I had no choice in the circumstances but to complain to the speaker that they had violated all parliamentary standards. You know all this that you're telling me but you can draw your own conclusions. These have never happened before in any parliamentary committee. Yes there have been differences of opinion even after a report has been placed there have been dissenting notes but this kind of deep divisions within this all party committee on issues that as you yourself mentioned concern the people of this country. It concerns everybody, you, me and the whole, every other citizen of this country. Let me tell you there was even the most astonishing phenomenon when 17 people showed up at the committee meeting. But ten of them were members of the ruling party who refused to sign the attendance register thereby denying the committee a quorum to hold hearing on the subject. So it's very clear that we are in a position where it's going to be difficult for the committee to have meaningful deliberations on Pegasus. Nonetheless when the Ministry of Information Technology testified on unrelated matter on on matters to do with the Ministry's work with us a question was asked about Pegasus by me and the answer that was given was that they had no answer to give. And I think it's very clear that the committee as a forum is not going to be able to take this matter much further. Even when Pegasus erupted in the late summer of 2021 I had actually made a public statement at that time despite being chairman of the committee that though I would attempt as chairman of the committee to get the committee to do its work on this matter that I myself called for a judicially supervised inquiry saying that the judiciary had authority including authority to take certain kinds of actions that were beyond the remit of the committee even in the event that the committee were unanimously determined to pursue it. But since the committee was divided about whether we should even discuss the matter it was best that the the judiciary take action. I'm very pleased that the Supreme Court is seized of the matter but we're certainly looking forward to seeing what comes out of their inquiries. Okay, time alone we'll tell. Thank you for giving me all the information that you did. I didn't think you would open up to the extent you did because as you yourself meant well you know the fact is every single one of the things I've told you is in the public domain not not as a result of my doing but because the enterprising parliamentary media have already reported all of this. I don't feel I violated any any confidentiality but on the other hand there will be some friends perhaps who will feel otherwise and we'll see what happens. I want to ask you an unrelated question but it's also related to information technology. It also connects it is connected with the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology. We have a company which is called the CSE Governance Services India Limited. CSE is an acronym for Common Services Centre. It sort of provides a host of digital online services delivery of public utilities etc. Now what the government is claiming at this is a it is a government company it is a special purpose vehicle but investigations done by my colleague Ravi Nair shows that nearly 78 percent of the shares held of this company are held by banks, financial institutions, private entities yet the government has bypassed the whole tendering process and given this company contracts worth large amounts of money literally thousands of crore rupees to give a whole range of services including using the government domain name called gov in GOV.in. Now I understand you've raised questions about this in parliament. What do you think should be done? Do you think another inquiry is required into this? I'm afraid this is a matter that I will not be able to answer officially simply because we have not reported on it. Questions have come up about the CSEs in two or three different committee hearings and answers that have been sort of received on the subject are matters that will be included in a report to parliament. Let me just say that your phrasing of the question is entirely appropriate and is entirely accurate from what I understand and that's why these questions needed to be asked but really beyond that I cannot go without violating my role and propriety as chairman of the committee but the issues are right to be flagged. So let me instead now start asking you a few political questions. There are a lot of people who believe that the weakness of the Congress the internal problems if you like within the Congress it doesn't have a full-time working president is contributed a lot to the lack of unity amongst opposition parties parties opposed to the ruling Bharti Janta party and this has contributed to the strength of the current ruling dispensation. You know I've been a little I can't say silent but let's say less valuable on the subject of internal congress politics largely because there has been a feeling that these are issues we need to thrash out within the party rather than airing it in public forums and particularly because airing it in public forums has so far not been productive at all in fact as anything has been unproductive there is an immediate circling of the wagons within the party saying that anybody who dares criticize the party in public is being disloyal and the irony is that those of us with perhaps the longest and strongest record of convictions over a long period of time that are the convictions that the Congress party ought to stand for are the ones who in many cases are particularly shall we say tarnished for having quote-unquote spoken out of line so I hesitate to give more fodder at a time when the party is so much under the cost is so much under attack and being weakened daily by desertions and other problems I hesitate to add further fuel to the fire having said that let me just say on what you said that I am a very strong believer in opposition unity one of the interesting issues is I mean I'm one of these odd characters who actually believes that politics are about principles and I find that where the principles of many of the opposition parties are completely in sync with each other and they only happen to be different parties because of reasons to do with either personality or sort of caste identification no regional identification but basically they believe in broadly the same sets of things of an inclusive character for India respecting and celebrating our pluralism social justice through the economy you know there are half a dozen core issues that everyone knows for example that the upa government stood for which are still adhered by seven eight different parties today in the public space that are not united with each other and so I have always felt since principles are what matter to me and since there is no fundamental ideological difference on principles that opposition unity ought to be our principle preoccupation I wrote about this after 2019 as well what we are today seeing is the fragmentation I go back to the lack of opposition unity is an important source of strength for the BJP and it seems at this particular point of time and that it's the reluctance of the congress to accommodate others that is a that that is one of the reasons that I guess I'm repeating myself but that is the perception how fair it is will vary from individual case to individual case and as I say because I'm not privy to any of these discussions in the party I don't speak with any particular authority but my impression that in some cases the party has indeed been been unwilling to accommodate in other cases others have been unwilling to accommodate the party so it's it's not as if it's purely one-way traffic I think however that had we started off at mid 2019 creating a forum already when the whole nation was reeling from the shock of the BJP not just winning again but winning with an enhanced majority that time as I said publicly and wrote had we at that point reached out to all the parties and said let's create a forum where we can talk to each other understand each other's needs and concerns better and as far as possible coordinate our actions to resist this this juggernaut then we would be better off it's still not too late it never is too late because obviously it's never too late something we missed for a couple of years you take Uttar Pradesh in in in five years ago in 2017 there was an alliance between the congress and the samajwati party but both the parties performed badly the BJP came back with oh I mean not came back in one a whopping majority despite demonetization that happened a few months earlier in in November 2016 this time both the samajwati party and the congress are reluctant to even work out even an understanding and at the end of the day it's probably going to benefit the hearty janta party you're not even arriving I mean forget seat sharing I think at the end of the day the samajwati party will say okay you you want more seats same story in Bihar being repeated and and the congress say no we want to exist as a party we once upon a time we were strong in Uttar Pradesh so what we are seeing is a refusal to recognize its weaknesses in in states like Uttar Pradesh and therefore in a sense helping the BJP it's all over again it's the same story the unfortunate story being repeated I recognize I recognize what you're saying it's one of these situations where I think each side has proven reluctant to work with the other in this particular context there are various issues in any of these alliance discussion as I don't really know what specifically is happening in any particular case because I'm not officially privy to these discussions but in general I would say that there are situations in which previous experiences of building an alliance have been hampered by perceptions of votes not being transferred by particular parties supporters to others I'm afraid particularly in some of the North Indian states caste factors come in very strongly what looks on paper like an attractive combination of a party let's say that attracts upper caste and Dalit votes merging with a party or not allowing with a party that attracts OBC votes for example that seems to be perfectly logical they should complement each other but when the voters go to the actual booths do they vote for the OBC candidate from their party is is officially endorsing from another party or do they vote for the upper caste candidate or the Dalit candidate of a third party who is not part of the alliance these are questions where I think each individual party makes its own calculations and deciding whether this is going to be worth it for them one last question on politics it's a very general question we see the current state of the economy the Indian economy which is in a mess I mean to put it very mildly I mean even the government's own data and we can question the government's data but even the government's data shows that things are far from good I mean we are yet to even reach the pre-covid kind of a situation unemployment according to the center for monitoring the Indian economy monitoring Indian economy is at a peak for I mean it's the worst unemployment ever recorded inflation you name it yet the ruling party seems to be able to get away and these issues are literally brushed under the carpet instead we have Mandir masjid we have religious I mean we understand that the rastria swams swam seva ksang the rss the ideological parent of the bharti janta party wants a hindu rasha but how is it that this government has been able to in a sense almost divert the attention of large sections of indians away from the the issues that are supposed to matter unemployment the state of the economy inflation and so on and so forth the the the miserable health care system in this country which got revealed especially after covid yes you know I've asked myself this question many times already in 2019 I had the feeling that a young man in UP who would have voted for mr moody in 2014 because he thought he was going to get a job mr moody was painting all these fantasies of jobs coming out in large numbers why would he work for mr moody again when he didn't have a job seemed to me very rational question to ask well apparently he voted because of pulva pulwama and balakot and and chapanechki chati and keeping india safe from pakistan two years later it seems that now the message is you know hindu identity and ayodhya and and and showing the muslims their place and the sort of thing it's a it's a very disappointingly negative politics those of us who think that voting is about you know acting in your own self-interest asking yourself very rationally has this government improved my life in the last few years and if it hasn't who should i give a chance to that kind of voting behavior which is commonplace in most democracies somehow in our system under this particular bjp government gets elided or gets bypassed by issues of national security national pride caste identity religious identity and hatred of others which is a very dangerous way for a democracy to go how these institutions in more ways than one are being in you know really weakened compromised these are statutory organizations these are constitutional bodies and i don't know how soon if at all the damage will be undone and we still have to wait for more than two years for the next general elections but if what you says was true for 2019 for you know it might be true for 2024 as well are you i mean we can't predict the future i'm not prepared to be a pessimist i think we really will have to the country deserves a chance to undo the mistake of the mistakes of the last seven eight years and and 24 is that next chance now if we can't get our act together it doesn't mean that the ideals and principles and values we stand for aren't worth fighting for i think they are okay i have two questions and they are in a sense maybe nothing to do nothing to do with politics nothing to do with uh nothing to do with information technology one is a personal question after the death of sunanda pushkar in january 2014 more than seven years later in august 2021 the deli court the special judge gitanjali goel acquitted you of all charges that have been levered by the deli police including abetment to suicide and you thanked her you felt relieved but are your travels over or you think the deli police might appeal well i'm i'm i'm hearing that they may even have appealed but i've not received a notice or anything this the process takes time and of course the courts have also been affected by covid so no i'm not prepared to count my blessings as it were of this nature because clearly this kind of harassment is not likely abandoned the truth is that that though the three month period available to the police to appeal has lapsed that expired by november mid november the courts have a habit of condoning delays by the police so an appeal filed in january or whatever could still come on stream because the courts have been indulgent of the police in the past as well so we'll wait and see i i have not got the full picture yet as far as i'm concerned i'm trying to do my work serve the people who elected me and we will see at the end of the day whether whether this process needs to go on but i think at this stage you know my faith in our judicial system has really been upheld by the incredibly detailed and professional judgment that was given all right my last question to you and this is the easiest question of all the questions i've asked you have not a single easy question so far so this is a goody goody question how do you react to people you know mocking you poking fun at you because you use big English words people have to scurry yeah these days don't go to the dictionary they have to go to google guru to figure out how all these words been and you become really the butt of jokes because you use obscure words words which you know ordinary even those who claim they understand english you know they don't so so you've got this reputation you went to the same college as i did you heard me debating there these are things that used not to be so obscure or difficult when you were in college we don't think steven's college not at all i don't blame it i credit it to steven's college that but i also of course i did read more extensively than the more people even in those days and perhaps that expanded the the range of vocabulary but i genuinely believe that the purpose of words is communication so i kept using words that people didn't understand i wouldn't really be an effective communicator okay and therefore i think that the the charges are somewhat mislead i mean i would like to think that what i have to say is is by and large understood of course uh if if you're talking about let's say somebody whose mother tongue is is hindi and who doesn't read much english complaining about my english they're entitled to do so but they're perhaps not the first audience uh for what i'm talking about but people who've been to schools like yours or colleges like ours they should they should listen to me they should understand what i have to say and i'm happy that you are not only improved your malayalam speaking skills i'm speaking in english thank you so much thank you thank you all the pleasure so all right all the best you just heard and watched dr sashi tharoor member of parliament talking to you on a range of subjects issues concerning information technology the misuse of information technology the misuse of social media and he's he's after all the chairman the head of the parliamentary standing committee for information technology he's talked to you about politics and questions about his personal life as well well keep watching news click subscribe to the channel click on that button and thank you very much for being with us