Towards that end it has now decided to train its leaders to think on its feet and respond swiftly to issues as soon as they come up.
NEW DELHI: It's all about the image. The country's grand old party, the Congress, is beginning to appreciate the need to engage the media in its daily battle for the hearts and minds of the people. Towards that end it has now decided to train its leaders to think on its feet and respond swiftly to issues as soon as they come up.
The party is organising a two-day workshop in New Delhi for its spokespersons and all those connected with its media cells across the country. It has invited senior journalists from both electronic and the print media to address the leaders on the new media environment and on what the party needs to do to meet the challenges faced by it in the changed environment.
There has been a growing feeling in the Congress that the party is too slow in its reaction to events and issues and as a result it has been losing the “battle of perception”, and has also grossly failed in publicising some of the achievements of the UPA government such as NREGA, and the measures it has taken for the benefit of the minorities based on the recommendations of the Sachhar Committee.
The issue was first brought up at a meeting of the publicity and campaign committee of the party by Rahul Gandhi and was subsequently taken up at a meeting of the senior leaders with party chief Sonia Gandhi.
An immediate fall out of the new thinking in the party has been the swift response of the party on to leader of the opposition LK Advani's allegations on the internal security front. The party immediately joined issue and sought to turn the table on him by pointing out that Afzal Guru, the mastermind of the terrorist attack on parliament was arrested and released by the NDA government two months before the attack on parliament.
The view taken by some of the younger leaders in the party , including Rahul Gandhi is that the party needs to bring about a change in its approach to news and publicity.
Some of the other changes suggested by the committee is that the government greater inflow of information from government to the party on its achievements and the need for the party to put out relevant information and its point of view in time for it to be used by the media.
j_ansari@dnaindia.net
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