Another important topic that came up for discussion was the rehabilitation of Kashmiri Pandits in the Valley, a pet cause the RSS feels the government hasn’t done much to pursue, the sources added.
New Delhi: A “heartfelt Dalit outreach” is among the tasks the RSS brass laid down for the BJP-led NDA government during their “discussions” with union ministers at Delhi’s Maharashtra Sadan over the past three days, sources said.
Others included delivering on the promises made in 2014, like generating employment and boosting domestic trade, and a more general “get your act together”, the sources added.
A team from the RSS, the BJP’s Nagpur-based ideological mentor, flew to the national capital right after the Modi government’s fourth anniversary, marked this weekend, for a four-day interaction with ministers and its various affiliates, an exercise a Sangh spokesperson described as an “annual exchange of ideas”.
It included RSS joint general secretaries, or sah sarkaryavah, Krishna Gopal, Suresh Soni, Manmohan Vaidya and Dattatreya Hosabale, who held meetings with union ministers Thawarchand Gehlot (social justice & empowerment), Piyush Goyal (finance, railways), Rajyavardhan Rathore (information & broadcasting, youth affairs & sports), Prakash Javadekar (human resource development), Giriraj Singh (micro, small & medium enterprises), J.P. Nadda (health & family welfare), Maneka Gandhi (women & child development), and Mahesh Sharma (culture, and environment, forest & climate change).
The BJP representatives at the interaction included party chief Amit Shah, vice-president Vinay Sahasrabuddhe, and general secretaries Ram Lal and Ram Madhav.
‘Anger in the Sangh’
Sources said the RSS was upset with the government for “not taking care of the middle class and making policies that had hurt them”. “The middle class has always been favourable to us and it is ignored by the government. Jobs, too, need to be created… this is what the ministers have been told,” a source added.
A clear message was also reportedly sent out to promote swadeshi products and ensure the protection of domestic trade. The government’s economic and trade policies have long been questioned by the Sangh affiliate Swadeshi Jagran Manch, which emerged recently as one of the most vocal critics of American giant Walmart’s “unethical” $16 billion takeover of Flipkart and the proposed privatisation of Air India.
Another important topic that came up for discussion was the rehabilitation of Kashmiri Pandits in the Valley, a pet cause the RSS feels the government hasn’t done much to pursue, the sources added.
The Sangh, however, sought to dodge allegations that it was tutoring the government on policy-making.
“Such meetings have taken place every year since 2007… This year it was planned in Delhi from May 28 to May 31. These are not coordination meetings, nor are these decision-making meetings,” RSS spokesperson Arun Kumar said.
Kumar said different RSS organisations working in the same field occasionally came together as a bunch of groups (service, intellectual, economic, education and social) to “share their experiments, experiences and observations”.
As a constituency, the middle class was expecting a lot from this government, especially on the economic front.