Congress on Ambedkar’s path: Agitate, educate and organise, says Sonia Gandhi

In a bid to rejuvenate the grand old party, Congress President Sonia Gandhi asked her party men to plan nationwide agitation to highlight economic slowdown, educate millennials on contemporary issues such as nationalism and start membership drive in villages to organise and strengthen party at the grassroot.

Chairing her first meeting with top party leaders after returning as the interim Congress president at the Congress headquarters in Delhi on Thursday, Sonia made it evident to her party men that “it’s not enough to be active and aggressive on social media alone.”

In her address, according to the Congress general secretary KC Venugopal, Sonia said there was a prolonged economic slowdown in the country. People are losing their jobs and the economy is getting shakier.

Sonia said, “We must stand up fearlessly to fight on the streets, fight in villages, towns and cities. We must have a concrete agitational agenda on issues of pressing concern to the people…It is not enough to be active and aggressive on social media… far more important is to go to the people directly.”

Stating that Sonia Gandhi will participate in the agitation in Delhi, Venugopal added, “The party then decided to organise a nationwide agitation from October 15 to October 25 on the issue”.

Congress general secretary Priyanka Gandhi will most likely lead the charge in Uttar Pradesh, said Congress.

After a long brainstorming session, the Congress also decided to launch teaching programmes to educate youths on nationalism and secularism – the two most contested ideas of the contemporary politics, often misused by the RSS-BJP and its allies, noted Congress leaders.

Congress spokesperson RPN Singh said that the party has decided to reach out to youths with aim to educate them about Congress’ history and role in freedom struggle.

To boost party’s organisational strength, under the leadership of Sonia Gandhi, Congress has also decided to launch “door-to door membership drive.”

“Party will soon launch an app to add new members to the party fold,” said RPN Singh adding that apart from traditional methods, party will use digital platforms to increase its membership at the grassroot level.

At present, Congress has 2 crore members which is very less as compared to the BJP which claims to be the world’s largest political outfit with about 9 crore members.

Analysts believe that this is for the first time in recent history that the Congress has come up with an all-round-approach to counter the BJP.

“With Gandhism at the core, Ambedkar’s path will indeed reap political dividends for the party,” said an analyst.