THE organisational workshop of Students’ Federation of India with the aim of developing organisation in the weak states was held in Lucknow from May 13-15. This was necessitated with the realisation in the Shimla and Vijayawada CEC meetings that our leading comrades in the weak states are still unequipped with the fundamental organisational skills and it is impossible to develop organisation in these states without taking on this aspect. It needs to be mentioned here that the 15th all India conference of SFI had called for ‘building a strong all India organisation and reaching the membership of 50 lakhs by next conference’. This goal can’t be achieved if we cannot drastically change our style of functioning in general and more so ever in the weak states.

The workshop was inaugurated by VP Sanu, all India president and the various sessions were taken by Akhil Vikalp (former CEC member and UP state secretary), Hoshiyar Singh and Sunand (both central secretariat members). General Secretary Vikram Singh and joint secretary Mayukh Biswas were also present in the workshop. A total of 52 leading activists from the states of Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh, Uttarakhand, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and Madhya Pradesh participated.

The main intent of the workshop was to ensure that the correct organisational methods and practices are infused into the functioning of the leading cadres in these states. The sessions ranged from the importance and methods of membership, unit building and functioning, activities, propaganda, leadership qualities and planning. Each session was designed in a two-way fashion so that concrete realities and challenges faced by the cadres in these states come to fore and adequate plan of action can be evolved. Each session was also devoted to practical aspects of the various organisational tasks including giving speech, writing press notes, writing leaflets, making posters, conducting organisational meetings and planning activities.

The 2008 Shimla document on organisation threadbarely puts the correct organisational methods. However, there has been a lacuna when it comes to implementing it across the country. In most of the weak states we are facing a situation wherein the movement has been either stagnant or inconsistent. This has prevented the correct organisational methods to be implemented on ground. Our membership in these states is not only low; a large part of it is never organised into units. Whenever units are formed they are not able to function properly or take up activities. All this has meant that the impact of our organisation (movement, mobilisation, so on and so forth) is much less than the membership. Further, this has also meant that the rate of building of new activists and cadres is very low, since activists can come up only through continuous activities and movements.  The workshop has identified concrete list of institutions in various states where we will be focusing in the current organisational year. With a time bound approach, monitoring and participation from the comrades (including that of all India centre), this stagnation can definitely be broken. This and only this can help us realise the task taken up by the Sikar all India conference.