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New Delhi, July 23: Regular training camps, padyatras, internal platforms to showcase performance and free and fair elections under Rahul Gandhi’s watch are changing the Youth Congress, seen till recently as a discredited front organisation.
An anti-drug campaign of the Youth Congress, which included a 45-day march to spread awareness last November, a hunger strike in March and raids on drug dens across the state, is being rated a success. Before the drive started, office-bearers attended a two-day workshop on the issue in Amritsar.
In Gujarat, the organisation held a Jal, Zameen, Jangal Bachao yatra for the rehabilitation of farmers displaced by mega projects.
More such campaigns have been conducted across the country by a group that in the past would only make news for the wayward activities of its members.
Youth Congress members, who ask not to be named, claim that people everywhere are surprised at the good work. They give credit to Rahul’s emphasis on democratisation and training, a claim seconded by senior Congress leaders.
While elections have given boys and girls from ordinary apolitical families to come up, the institutionalised training has helped inculcate a sense of purpose and discipline.
Rahul, who is the general secretary in charge of the Youth Congress, set up the Jawaharlal Nehru Leadership Institute to hold regular training camps for Youth Congress members across the country. While the training was initially seen as too corporate and apolitical, this has now changed.
The leadership institute is headed by Dr Jairam, who has come from the Infosys Leadership Initiative, and includes several professionals but it also has a political wing now involving Congress leaders.
While experts train workers in communication skills and personality development, Congress leaders look after the ideological and political aspects.
Senior Youth Congress leaders like Jitendra Singh, Manik Tagore, Meenakshi Natarajan and Rahul himself regularly participate in the five-day training camps.
Scheduled Castes and Tribes, minorities and women now have camps targeted at them where experts are invited for invited for talks.
At a recent programme for Youth Congress girls in Delhi, a woman panchayat leader from Alwar was called to share her experience of politics at the grassroots, a known feminist gave a lecture on gender issues and a woman minister talked about her struggles in the male-dominated field of power politics.
At the camps, politicians talk to the workers about Congress history, secularism and the art of mass mobilisation while experts lecture them on development issues, use of technology, economic problems and communication.
One Youth Congress leader associated with the training programme said: “We often find young boys from villages coming to the training programme almost raw but they return learning about RTI, fiscal deficit and pluralism of the country. They are told about the extraordinary welfare schemes launched by the Congress-led government and how to counter the Opposition propaganda that everything is rotten and corrupt.”
The organisation also has a system in place to monitor the performance of members. A new Internet-based interactive programme, Pehchaan, allows the central leadership to be in touch with elected office-bearers throughout the country. It allows office-bearers to share the latest information about themselves, their constituency and the organisation.
Asked if this does not give the Net-savvy youths an advantage over those coming from rural background, one leader said: “We have to promote use of technology though the traditional methods of interaction have not been banned. A leader had to travel hundreds of miles in the past to show his work to us. Now he can upload the report and photographs and we will monitor it. This is the first time in India that a political organisation will be using such a platform.”
The Youth Congress is also planning a communication and collaboration platform on Google for its over 28,000 elected office-bearers and volunteers for greater transparency, accessibility and exchange of information and views. It also plans to use networking sites like Facebook where the BJP’s youth wing is more active.
Rahul recently expressed satisfaction at a Youth Congress national executive that a concrete idea to move forward had been evolved, along with a performance evaluation and reward structure system. He asked the Youth Congress workers to campaign in states where the party was weak, take every section of the society along, encourage women’s participation at the grassroots and respect seniors.
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