The National Students’ Union of India, the Congress party’s students’ wing, is all set to play its part in the political revival of the party. It will soon launch a country-wide programme to support the education of children of farmers who have committed suicide.
Sources in the NSUI and the Congress told The Hindu that the programme aimed at supporting the school-going children of nearly 1,000 such farmers. .
The idea for the programme came up during Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi’s recent visits to families hit by the agrarian distress in Maharashtra and Telangana.
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NSUI president Roji M. John accompanied Mr. Gandhi during his visits. NSUI volunteers are conducting surveys in distress-affected areas of Marathwada and Vidarbha in Maharashtra, Bundelkhand in Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh, Telangana, Punjab, Haryana and Rajasthan.
“We are trying to assess the need for this programme and how receptive the affected families are to this idea,” an NSUI leader said. The survey reports will then be shared with the Rajiv Gandhi Foundation (RGF), headed by Congress president Sonia Gandhi, which works in the area of education. The NSUI hopes to play facilitator and raise funds for the programme through the RGF.
Paradigm shiftADVERTISEMENT
The scholarship scheme marks a paradigm shift in both the politics of the Congress vice-president and the role of the NSUI in the Congress scheme of things. Mr. Gandhi’s visits to Dalit homes during the decade-long Congress-led regime often drew sharp criticism from political opponents who accused him of indulging in ‘poverty tourism’.
He was also often accused of wasting too much time on revamping the frontal youth organisations, the NSUI and the Indian Youth Congress, at the cost of the Congress party. He was general secretary in-charge of the two between September 2007 and January 2013.
“Despite that prolonged engagement, the NSUI and the IYC failed to convert the youth vote in the Congress’ favour. The NSUI is now looking for an image makeover along with Mr. Gandhi. The plan is to engage with the 18-23 age group and introduce them to the ideas of the Congress,” a Congress leader said.
The 2014 Lok Sabha elections had nearly 11 crore new voters, most of them from this age group.
Internship programmeThe NSUI is also offering a month-long summer internship programme on “Democratising Public Policy” to undergraduate students in collaboration with the Rajiv Gandhi Institute of Contemporary Studies.
Nearly 20 students chosen for the programme will be attached to Congress MPs and the party’s policy units, while RGICS will deal with the academic aspects of the programme. If successful, the pilot project being launched in June will be replicated as a multi-city project on a much larger scale, an NSUI office-bearer said.
The local Pradesh Congress Committees in Maharashtra and Telangana had distributed compensation cheques after Mr. Gandhi’s visits. A Congress leader involved with the planning of the yatras said: “The sense we got during Mr. Gandhi’s meetings was that the famers’ families expected help where the State governments had failed. So the PCC units took the initiative and extended financial aid.”