Congress on mission Dalit: SC leaders to be elected, trained and empowered

NEW DELHI: In a bid to reclaim its traditional Dalit vote base, which has been successfully weaned away by BSP supremo Mayawati over the years, Congress is embarking on an ambitious exercise to identify grassroots Dalit leaders through a meticulous election process.

Taking a leaf out of Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi’s experiments in Youth Congress, the party has decided to undertake a similar membership and election process for identifying Dalit leaders in all states.

The party would make a beginning with Rajasthan. Speaking to ET K Raju, who has been hand-picked by Rahul to head the so-far defunct Scheduled Castes department of Congress, said, “Our first challenge is to nurture committed and passionate Dalit leaders at all levels who would help other Dalits to access their rights and entitlements. So the task is to identify these leaders, train them and put them in positions of responsibility.” Raju said the party would follow Rahul’s experiments in Youth Congress. “Yes we would undertake elections in all states.

This experiment would not yield immediate results because its a long term plan,” the former bureaucrat said. At present, the party has a formal structure in states but the Dalit leaders have no clear brief. The central leadership appoints chairpersons, vice-chairpersons and general secretaries of Scheduled Castes department at the state level. These leaders, in-turn, appoint the leaders on the next tiers at the district and block levels.

However, there is no specific programme or plan of action for these leaders. “All of them (office-bearers) are appointed in every state but there is no programme for them. During my interactions with them I have realized that they don’t have much to say when I ask them what have they done to build confidence amongst Dalits. You cannot blame them because there is no clear plan of action for them,” Raju said.

The party is first planning to start a membership drive where it would involve professionals to ensure it is fool proof. After this, the party would hold training programmes by attaching them to NGOs and training institutions so that they develop leadership qualities. The approach has been streamlined after a series of intra-party discussions.

There is a growing realization that Congress would have to tap into Dalit vote base all over again. This was evident in a recent speech by Rahul at a convention in New Delhi when he spoke about how no political party had given space to Dalit leaders and nurtured them. He had said that Congress would step in and build dalit leadership from block upwards, so that there was a wider choice from the community.

Source: The economic Times