It was the Election Commission’s ban on graffiti, posters and banners during elections and its increasing strictness regarding election expenditure limits that inspired the Congress think tank to propose transformation of the 123-year-old Congress into a cadre-based party.The Group to Look into Future Challenges, which made the proposal in its report on intra-party reforms recently, was of the view that parties like the BJP did better in recent elections because Sangh Parivar “cadres” were able to reach out to people door-to-door, while the Congress remained hamstrung banking on its candidates’ individual abilities and resources to pull it off. The same was true for the cadre-based Left in West Bengal, Kerala and Tripura.“Now our campaigns are mainly candidate-oriented. We want to make them party-oriented. That’s why the need for committed workers or cadres who can do door-to-door campaigning instead of organising meetings for the candidate or big party leaders,” said a member of the Future Challenges Group headed by M Veerappa Moily.In view of the “new challenges” arising out of the Election Commission’s ban on posters and graffiti to prevent defacement of public and private properties, the Congress has to find out some way to touch every household right from the day of election notification till the end of the campaign, he said. “In the Karnataka elections also, the BJP’s central leaders remained behind doors, while Sangh Parivar cadres were visiting every household. That made a crucial difference,” said another member. The report of the Future Challenges Group, therefore, proposed training progra-mmes for party workers from booth to top level. The Congress is already giving training to party workers in batches of 75 about the party’s ideology, policy and programmes. This would be “greatly expanded” to create a pool of committed party cadres across the country. The training would enable them to spread the party’s message as well as the UPA Government’s achievements among the people, said the sources. The presence of such cadres is also expected to minimise the influence of “musclemen and moneyed people” in elections.A section of the Congress remained apprehensive of the proposed move, as they saw no reason for a mass-based party to transform itself into a cadre-based one, especially when the Seva Dal already fitted into the role of cadres. Those supporting the move, however, argued that the Seva Dal had been reduced to a “decorative entity whose job has got limited to saluting top leaders”. Sources in the group said the proposed cadres wouldn’t be exactly like those in the Sangh Parivar or the Left. “Those are full-time cadres whose needs are taken care by the respective parties. What we propose to do is to build up a pool of committed workers wholly devoted to party works. Whether the party should sustain them financially is something we have not thought over at this stage,” said a source.
