Battle 2019: Congress tries to build a cadre, with more help from women

Scarcity of resources has made the party devise new means to build a booth level organisation

The women’s wing of the Congress has added 80,000 new workers to its fold in the last couple of months. Over the past fortnight, its padyatras and public rallies in places like Jhalawar in Rajasthan, Rajnandgaon in Chhattisgarh, Mandsaur in Madhya Pradesh and Rohtak in Haryana – none of which are known for vibrant participation of women in political work – have drawn thousands of women to the party's cause.

While this surge in membership is starkest in Lok Sabha member Sushmita Dev headed ‘Mahila Congress’, it has also been seen in other wings of the party. Congress leaders credit the increase in party membership to the recently launched ‘Shakti’ app and careful follow-up fieldwork. Party sources admit that most who have registered are existing party workers, but the Congress, and not just its individual leaders, finally has a database of its workers.

According to a party source, ‘Shakti’ app helped the Congress add 4,000 women workers in Jhalawar itself. Jhalawar is the constituency of Rajasthan Chief Minister Vasundhara Raje, and Mahila Congress chief Dev held what she describes as successful meetings in the constituency late last month. The ‘Mahila Congress’ campaign will cover several of the states where the Congress still has significant presence on the ground before culminating in a ‘Mahila Adhikar Sammelan’, or a conference for the rights of women, with Congress chief Rahul Gandhi addressing it.

If the BJP has its ‘NaMo’ app, the Congress launched ‘Shakti’ app in a staggered manner in some of the states since June. It has asked current party workers to register on the app, and encourage others to become workers of the party. A simultaneous door to door campaign attempts to verify the details of the workers who have registered, and some are put on party’s WhatsApp groups and identified as resource persons for each polling booth.

For the election going states of Telangana, Chhattisgarh, Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh, the party has fixed October 7 as the deadline for its state units to put in place committees to look at each aspect of its election campaigning, including a core committee, a publicity committee and a manifesto committee. At some places, like in West Bengal, it has had to replace its state unit chiefs when faced with resistance to its plans.

The Shakti app has a link to the Congress chief’s twitter handle, who has taken to tweeting in Hindi much more. This allows Gandhi’s message to reach the worker on the ground quickly. Workers are encouraged to WhatsApp their feedback, including newspaper reports and video clips. Gandhi has taken to calling up some of the workers to know their feedback. “It is important that the news and photographs of the Congress president’s public rallies and temple visits across the country reaches workers on the ground,” a source, associated with the process, said.

The target, party sources said, is to have at least 10 workers in each polling booth. The focus currently is on the states going to polls, with Madhya Pradesh being an exception as the party has entrusted state unit chief Kamal Nath with running the entire campaign there. “Typically in the Congress party, it is the candidate who contests an election. If one aspirant doesn’t get a ticket, his followers do not campaign. There have been occasions when we couldn't get even a single worker for a polling booth on election day. We hope to overcome this limitation by the exercise,” a party leader said.

The Congress will soon hold booth level meetings, and is creating posts within party hierarchy to entrust specific individuals the responsibility of managing polling booth teams. Each district unit now has a district level social media coordinator, who reports to three coordinators at the central level. Each of these national coordinators handle 12-states and union territories each.

Scarcity of resources has taught the Congress, and several of the regional parties, the futility of competing with a resource rich Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and its vast social media network. Necessity has taught these political parties the virtues of decentralization, synergy and pooling resources. Trinamool Congress leader Derek O’Brien and Congress social media chief Divya Spandana, as well as social media chiefs of Samajwadi Party and Rashtriya Janata Dal exchange notes frequently.

Congress leaders deny that they cooperate with Aam Aadmi Party (AAP)’s social media team. But there have been several occasions in recent months where the two social media teams have attempted to build similar narratives against the Narendra Modi government. O’Brien and AAP social media chief Ankit Lal share a good rapport.