Narendra Modi government for mechanism to ensure harmony between Centre and RSS

NEW DELHI: The second NDA government seems to be putting in place an organisational mechanism to ensure that there is perfect harmony between the government and Sangh Parivar organisations over issues of economic policy. The Modi government is institutionalising a government-organisational interface to ensure that the government is ideologically in tune with aspirations and concerns of RSS affiliates.

The first step in this direction seems to be a half-day meeting between RSS leaders and ministers dealing with economic is sues to address and understand each other’s view points. The venue of the meeting is also significant:

The RSS office in Delhi’s Jhandewalan. A couple of important RSS leaders, heads of Swadeshi Jagran Manch, Bharatiya Mazdoor Sangh, RSS whole-timers in BJP Ram Lal, Muralidhar Rao and Ram Madhav are expected to meet with the ministers. Though only Kalraj Mishra who heads the Ministry of Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises and agriculture minister Radha Mohan Singh are expected to attend the meeting, almost all important economic ministries like finance, corporate affairs, commerce, power,coal and environment are represented by important ministers in the government.

The exercise, according to sources, will create an atmosphere of trust between heads of various organisations of RSS and the ministers of the government and will also help each RSS organisation to push its agenda and ensure that the government is not working against wishes of the RSS organisations and their cadres.

The worst criticism of the first NDA government had come from within the Sangh Parivar, particularly on Vajpayee’s economic policies. During the term of the Vajpayee government, Dattopant Thengadi, a veteran RSS leader, who had established Bharatiya Mazdoor Sangh, Swadeshi Jagran Manch, Kisan Sangh and other affiliates, even called a special all-India meeting of his organisations at Ram Lila Maidan in April, 2001 to unleash an attack on the Atal Bihari Vajpayee government and pointedly against then finance minister Yashwant Sinha.

Though during the tenure of the Vajpayee government there were many attempts to bridge the gap between the government and the Sangh affiliates, there was a huge trust deficit between Vajpayee and his ministers on the one side and Thangadi and his cadres on the other. Thengadi died in October 2004, but the new government appears to be sensitive towards criticism from siblings of the larger Parivar.