After a false start over nomenclature, the Congress has kickstarted a long-term training programme for its cadre to ensure a continuous engagement where the party line could be laid out and clarified as opposed to engagement dictated by the election calendar alone.
Christened as Congress Worker Development, the programme ran into trouble on Thursday last during a meeting chaired by its president Sonia Gandhi. During the presentation on the programme made by Training Department head Sachin Rao, many in the party objected to “training co-ordinators” being called “preraks” — a term too similar to pracharaks of the RSS. While shooting down the term, Ms. Gandhi allowed the Training Department to go ahead with the programme.
“The basic idea is that there should be continuous engagement instead of event-based conversation with the worker. So a monthly schedule will be worked out for an open debate at the District Congress Committee level where the ongoing issues, party’s ideological & political stand will be discussed,” a top functionary familiar with the details said.
The debate on Article 370 brought the deep fissures in the party to the fore with a large section speaking in favour of it’s nullification. “Article 370 will not be the last time the Congressmen will face the tough choice between standing by the Constitution or become politically irrelevant. With Ram Mandir and Uniform Civil Code ahead of us, the training programme assumes greater importance,” the functionary added. The first round of conversations with the State in-charges and a few of the PCC members has been completed.
An important aspect of the programme will be to “equip” the cadres with information to counter historical and political propaganda, the leader said. These monthly meetings or baithaks will be open house affairs. “Yes, this leaves space for airing discordant views, but we strongly believe that this kind of a churning is essential within the party if it were to resolve issues,” the Congress functionary added. All this is to be handled by 3-5 training co-ordinators at ever State level who were initially christened as “preraks”.
The Congress research department headed by Rajya Sabha MP Rajeev Gowda will be handling the back end of the programme providing the content. The programme, sources said, would be tailored according to each State’s issues. Other than monthly meetings, there would be intensive camp for selected volunteers too.
The training programme is also to generate a genuine database of the Congress workers, who attend the events regularly giving party a direct feedback about its presence in various States.
