Rizwan Arshad’s three sons have no mobile phones and no video games. Asked whether he was serious, Karnataka’s Minister for Food, Civil Supplies and Consumer Affairs, Rizwan Arshad, said he was, and noted that his wife is the stricter enforcer.
It is a rare policy that a politician can carry out without a cabinet vote. He also backs barring children under 16 from social media, though he told Expressions that a government order alone won’t make that work. Parents, he said, will have to join in.
His path to the cabinet was not, in his word, “parachuted.” He lost Lok Sabha races in 2014 and 2019, the second one narrowly, and admits he wondered whether he had a political future at all. His father, an advocate, had a single rule for defeat: hold your head high and keep your dignity. That same year, a by-election in Shivajinagar gave him a seat, and he has held it since.
Power, he has found, brings its own burden, which is saying no. Old friends ask for favours the rules don’t allow, and some take the refusal personally. “It’s tough,” he said, more than once.
So was his first look inside his own department. By his account, a food system serving some 4.5 crore people had no CCTV in a single godown and no GPS on a single truck. Most of the vehicles now carry GPS, he says, with cameras and a command centre to follow.
What makes someone a true Kannadiga? An instinct, he said, to switch languages to put a stranger at ease. He is learning Tamil on the job.
And when the files close for the day, he heads for Shivajinagar’s street food, eaten on the street, as he insists it must be.
Watch the full conversation on Expressions