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Journalism of Courage
At New Delhi’s Karnataka Bhavan canteen, Sagar Khandre, the 26-year-old Congress Member of Parliament (MP) from Bidar, is talking between spoonfuls of poha when a man walks up to him. He says he is from Sagar’s constituency and has travelled two days to meet the MP in Delhi. A couple of minutes later, another man walks over and talks to him about a pipeline being built in Bengaluru by a major Indian conglomerate. Yet another comes to invite him for an event. Sagar shakes hands with each of them, greets them in Kannada and takes selfies with them.
In another part of the Capital, Iqra Choudhary, 29, the newly elected Samajwadi Party (SP) MP from Uttar Pradesh’s Kairana, too, is getting used to the newfound attention. Though she belongs to a political family and has grown up in the public eye, the five years she spent studying in Delhi and the one doing a masters in London gave her an anonymity that she is now having to shed. Making her way through Delhi’s Khan Market, she gets some curious glances.
A man follows her to a coffee shop and tells her that he has been tracking her work since the time she campaigned for her brother Nahid Hasin in the 2022 Assembly elections. “Kairana is just 100 km from Delhi, so a lot of people recognise me. I have always been told that I can never say no to people; that is turning out to be an advantage in politics,” she says.
Elected to the 18th Lok Sabha, Sagar and Iqra are among seven first-time under-30 MPs who, as representatives of their constituencies, are finding their feet and voice in the country’s supreme legislative body — Parliament.
In a country with over half the population (nearly 52 per cent) below 30 as per the NHFS-5 (National Family Health Survey 5), and people under 25 projected to outnumber those over 65 at least until 2078 as per UN’s population estimates, every articulation of theirs will be carefully watched.
The seven MPs are Iqra, Sagar, Priya Saroj, Pushpendra Saroj, Shambhavi Choudhary, Sanjna Jatav and Priyanka Jarkiholi. We meet some of them as they make their
big debut.
How do these first-time MPs — some of whom were preparing for exams, finishing their studies, and thinking of plans ahead just six months ago — navigate challenges?
Many fall back on family.
Of the seven, only Congress’s Sanjna, an MP from Bharatpur in Rajasthan, has no political lineage. She is also the only one who has been part of local governance as a member of the zila parishad. The viral video of Sanjna dancing to a folk song after her win — a rare moment of joy and abandon for Indian women politicians — and the powerful image of her with the women in her family in their traditional clothes on the steps of Parliament, are few and far in between.
On the other hand, some have the guaranteed support that a family steeped in politics brings.
When we visit Priya, 25, who represents Machhlishahr, UP, she is at a temporary accommodation — the official MP bungalows have not been allocated yet. Her father Tufani Saroj is a three-time MP and is currently an MLA from the Kerakat seat in UP. “Some people have been working with my father for over 25 years. I continue to work with them. I do my research and my father guides me. He lost the 2014 election. During these 10 years without a post, he just travelled the area. In my first speech this session, I took a lot of pointers from him… My brother handles my social media accounts,” says Priya.
Sagar’s father Eshwara Khandre, too, is a cabinet minister in Karnataka. Having one’s family in politics is an advantage, says Sagar, “It is not just us. If you look at all the MPs, the majority of them come from (political) backgrounds… There is a thing about accepted leadership, right? For people around you to accept your leadership, it gets really hard (without such connections), no matter how efficient or hardworking or smart you are.”
But, beyond family, there are mentors within Parliament. One cannot discount the camaraderie among them. For instance, after the inaugural session of Parliament in June, a senior Opposition leader hosted a few MPs at his home. Some of these under-30 MPs met each other for the first time here. Later, a few of them met for dinner at an Italian restaurant in an upscale Delhi neighbourhood.
Amid the din of the bustling restaurant, Iqra, Pushpendra, Sagar and Priya got to know one another. They found common ground as they discussed the challenges of dealing with local officials and fund allocation in their respective constituencies. They discovered the issues that they faced were varied.
For Sagar and Pushpendra, a 25-year-old Samajwadi Party MP from UP’s Kaushambi, it is unemployment among the youth. For Iqra, it is the problems of sugarcane farmers. And for Priya, it is about getting railway lines in Machhlishahr.
Says Iqra: “We have met a couple of times and have discussed a range of things… There are procedures in Parliament and they are logistical questions. For instance, Rule 377, then Zero Hour questioning, the ballot system in place for your questions getting picked in the Lok Sabha… These are the professional aspects. On the personal front, we are getting to know each other. Pushpendra studied at Queen Mary University in London and I was at SOAS (School of Oriental and Asian Studies, London). I studied law, so did Priya.”
Many of these MPs speak of their bond with Baramati MP Supriya Sule, who they call Supriya tai. Pushpendra says, “Supriya ji said if we need any help, we can go to her because she gets along with everybody. Proposition, opposition, anybody. I went up to (Thiruvananthapuram MP Shashi) Mr Tharoor and introduced myself. He was also very nice and well-spoken. At an airport lounge, I met Jagdambika Pal from the BJP, a very experienced politician. He was the one who walked up to me and said hi. That was very nice.”
Shambhavi, 26, who is from the Lok Janshakti Party (Ram Vilas) of the ruling BJP-led National Democratic Alliance, says South Delhi MP Bansuri Swaraj and Hamirpur MP Anurag Thakur had advice for her. “The main point that really stuck with me was that he (Thakur) asked me to listen to everybody. Sit in Parliament and observe — that itself will give you a lot of inputs… He revealed how he was nervous before his first speech, but assured me that everything would go well and I did not have to worry. That was really kind of him,” says Shambhavi.
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On the weekend, when the House is not in session and they head back home, they have a different routine. Shambhavi says, “We have a very big constituency, with six legislative Assembly seats. People come to meet you from faraway places… So, connectivity is very important.”
And in these seats that the seven MPs represent, they are still confronted with basic issues: water, electricity, roads, education and health. Iqra says, “My constituency is primarily rural and agrarian. So, people are not used to paying electricity bills till now. Whenever there is a transition that happens, it becomes difficult to put people in that system. That is the challenge we are facing — to get people to start paying bills.” She also speaks of the lack of woman doctors in her constituency. “There is just one woman doctor for three Assembly constituencies… That is about one woman doctor for 10 lakh people in a primary health care centre. This one doctor has to go for hearings, if there are rape cases, attend to patients and also deliver babies.”
In her debut speech in Parliament, Sanjna said: Mein zameen se judi hui hun aur kisaan parivar ki beti hu, isliye kisaanon ka dard mehsoos karti hu (I am from an agrarian family myself so I can understand the pain of the farmers). She underlined a fundamental problem people faced: water crisis.
Pushpendra, son of former MP and current MLA Indrajeet Saroj, says he gets calls for jobs every single day: “Even qualified individuals just want Rs 5,000-6,000 a month to support their family. That is very depressing to see.” Meanwhile, Sagar speaks of higher allocation for funds in Kalyana Karnataka, the more backward region in the state, under which Bidar falls.
For Priya, as a Dalit woman, empowerment is key.“In our village, upper and lower castes still cannot intermingle. As MPs, too, we have faced this. We are not allowed in many temples. Main ek extra push dena chahungi un logon ko jo abhi bhi vanchit hain apne rights se (I want to give an extra push to the underprivileged who are deprived of their rights).”
When Pushpendra took his oath in English, people back home were “fascinated”, he says, “I am probably more comfortable in English but going ahead, whatever I speak in Parliament is going to be in Hindi… I am representing my people and they have hope in me. They want someone to speak for them, so it’s important how I conduct myself.”
Priya studied law at Amity University and had her politics figured out but when it was time to communicate her ideas to people, she faced a problem — she was thinking in English or Hinglish. “I used to use words like ‘representative’ and ‘transparency’. Now, I am consciously using Hindi words. Apne kshetra mein humare kaaryakram jo bhi hote hain, usmein main koshish karti hun ki shudhh Hindi mein bolun (In any event that I participate at home, I try and speak in proper Hindi). I look at every word beforehand. I use words such as samaanta (equality) and adhikaar (rights). What happens when you use these words? Your people understand what you want to say,” she says.
Among the seven, three (Priya, Sagar and Iqra) have studied law, while Shambhavi has a masters in sociology, and Pushpendra a bachelors in finance. But the chasm between what they have studied and the realities of Indian public life are stark.
Says Iqra, “I went to Lady Shri Ram College, so there is a seed of feminism in me. But what I encounter back in my constituency is a different kind of feminism. For me, it is important to fight for them. It is about bringing women up to that parity level, the question of wearing what you want comes later. It is about getting access to basic things. There are very peculiar and instance-based issues. And appearance matters, too. I wear a headscarf for religious reasons and culturally, too. Jat women and Gujjar women in my seat cover their head.”
“The triple talaq issue is an example. Earlier, women would get a faisla (judgement). Now, there are more cases of abandonment among Muslim women. It is not that this law has helped. The woman has no recourse. This problem is spreading. Then, there are issues like inheritance — what happens when someone’s husband dies, etc… These are the kind of issues we have to deal with on a daily basis,” she adds, “Most literature I read in college is not from India. And Bihar is a completely different set-up. Some theories you read do not accommodate certain things we see,” says Shambhavi.
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Life as an MP is a grind, a 24×7 demanding lifestyle — on an average some of them meet 300 people a day.
But, is there anything that they miss? Priya says dancing. “I used to be in the dance society in my college. But, of course, I have no time for that now.”
Others feel a pinch of nervousness, too. Shambhavi says, “People are always taking pictures. So, you have to be proper all the time. I would initially think: ‘What if I say something wrong? What if I misspell something? I will be trolled.’ In the beginning, I received a lot of hate comments because people are not used to seeing a young woman out there… But when I was in the field, interacting with people, that is what really matters.”
