RJD’s Bihar unit president Ram Chandra Purbey. Picture by Deepak Kumar

Patna, March 25: For Lalu Prasad-led Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD), it is a journey back to the route of education.

Smarting under the humiliating defeat in the state Assembly elections, the party has decided to educate its workers. And it would not just be a symbolic exercise, as many would think going by the style in which the party functions. Rather, the RJD is moving in a very meticulous manner on this front, this time.

The seriousness can be gauged from the fact that the party is charting out a syllabus that would be used to educate the workers.

RJD’s Bihar unit general secretary Ram Vachan Rai, who is a retired professor of Patna University and a former MLC, has been entrusted with the task of finalising the syllabus and also prepare the study material for this programme.

 

“The idea hit us while we were observing the birth anniversary of Ram Manohar Lohia on March 23 at the party office when Rai mentioned about a book Interval During Politics written by Lohia,” RJD Bihar unit president Ram Chandra Purbey said.

Purbey said as the book discusses at length about the things a political worker should do in face of a defeat, we decided to do something similar for our party workers to keep them positively engaged after the drubbing it received in the Assembly elections.

Speaking about the things that were likely to be included in the syllabus to train the RJD workers, Rai said the introductory chapter would deal with the philosophies of eminent socialist leaders like Lohia, Jayaprakash Narayan, Achutha Patwardhan, Acharya JB Kripalani, Karpoori Thakur. “The syllabus would also include topics like conduct of a political worker, democratic values and how to keep oneself engaged in constructive work while preparing for a political battle,” Rai added.

He said all these topics would be prepared in a simple language, which would be easy for the workers to understand and these would be in the form of booklets and folders.

The RJD general secretary, however, is sceptical whether the benefits of the hard work in preparing the training material would actually reach the party workers.

“The manner in which plans are implemented in our party is an open secret. The past experience has put element of doubt in my mind whether the plan would be actually executed or not,” he said.

Around 100 workers would be trained in each block, and a pool of 200 master trainers would be created in Patna, the state unit president told The Telegraph. Purbey added the move was an attempt of the party to gear up for the upcoming battles and also to rejuvenate the party workers.