Rahul’s move puzzles NSUI and Youth leaders

Bhopal, Feb 07: AICC General Secretary Rahul Gandhi's move to get internet savvy and introduce email culture has puzzled the state NSUI and youth leaders. In Bhopal, NSUI leaders have received a high-tech format as a part of Rahul Gandhi's campaign to reach out to some two lakh NSUI members across the country via email and internet.

Privately, many leaders feel Rahul's move is typical of his ambitious projects being low on performance at the ground level. NSUI leaders are mustering courage to communicate to the young Gandhi that a large number if its rank and file in and outside Bhopal does not have email accounts or consists of regular net surfers. Moreover, the nature of youth politics is such partymen are not sure of number of people accessing the correspondence. The use of English as medium of language on net and email is proving another hurdle as most NSUI leaders are not confident of communicating in English language. At another level, Rahul seems to be getting mixed up between the charter of duties between Youth Congress and NSUI.

Old timers who were part of the youth Congress say much of the problems come from leadership's lack of understanding and charter for its youth wing. In last one decade or so, some IYC chiefs like Manish Tiwari Tanwar have jumped straight from NSUI to IYC while others like Satyajit Gaedwad and Randeep Singh Surjewala headed the youth wing with no prior stay in YC. Working of both the wings is entirely different. While Youth Congress is directly connected to main stream politics, NSUI is related to campus politics only, with a motive to improve the campus.

At present, with a photograph of Rahul Gandhi, a format has been circulated in all the states seeking information regarding 10 persons’ body in each college, whether government or private. This format includes- email address of the office bearer in the college. NSUI leaders claim that Rahul wants to interact with all the NSUI workers at a time through internet. The office bearers have also been provided with e-mail ID of Rahul, so that they may also contact directly to him regarding local problems. However, a section of union believes that in such an era, when everybody is neither net savvy nor has approach to internet, this facility would not yield better results. Even in state capital, there are only 60 percent people who have access to internet, while the situation in other towns of Madhya Pradesh more pathetic. All eyes are on Rahul if he will change the present situation. Former NSUI president Minakshi Natrajan is also assisting Rahul Gandhi in improving NSUI in Madhya Pradesh. At present, she is busy in conducting division level meetings with union workers.