CPM’s outreach in urban areas to counter RSS influence

New Delhi: Aiming to increase its footprint among the middle-class, the CPI(M) is roping in Left-leaning retired employees among others to get involved in residential area activities at a time the RSS is mobilising people by organising them under Resident Welfare Associations (RWAs) and other socio-cultural activities.

The party has acknowledged its “weakness” in taking initiative to develop organised activities in residential areas, especially in urban areas and wanted the units to integrate party activities with people’s daily lives.

A senior CPI(M) leader said the party’s weak structure in residential areas needs to be overcome in the view of the “RSS-led communal forces” mobilising people at residential areas by involving themselves in Resident Welfare Associations (RWAs) and other socio-cultural activities.

Retired employees and such others, who can play a role, should be involved in these efforts. The party also wants organised activities in slums, where a large number of unorganised sector workers reside, so as to gain their confidence and support for the party.

The leader pointed to the use of ‘Operation Sindoor’ by RSS-BJP leaning organisations in the residential areas in recent times and the need to counter such politicisation. The ‘WhatsApp’ groups of several RWAs are dominated by right-wing content, the leader said.

In its ‘Report on Organisation’ adopted at the Madurai ‘Party Congress’ in April, the CPI(M) had acknowledged that “Hindutva communal forces” are increasingly able to draw the middle class under their influence and the party’s traditional form of trade union work is not sufficient to ideologically influence them.

The report had emphasised the importance of ideological work among the middle class through cultural forums and RWAs.

It has set an expansion of activities in urban areas, especially in slums and bastis, apartments and lower middle-class localities through decentralised and flexible forms of organisation.