Poetry opium of masses?

NEW DELHI: Chetna yatra, jail bharo and gaon gaon, paon, paon. The Congress has tried many programmes to rejuvenate the organisation and recapture its old support base in the electorally crucial state of UP, but to little avail.
So, the state Congress is now resorting to a combination of poetry and prose to work the magic.
Taking a leaf from the freedom struggle, the UP Congress will solicit the help of poets and writers to drive home the message about the evils of communalism and casteism.It plans to hold mushairas and kavi sammelans in all the 70 districts of UP in the next three months.
‘‘Poets, writers and theatre personalities played a key role in the country’s freedom struggle. So we decided to involve the state’s poets and writers in our fight against communal forces,’’ explained Jagdambika Pal, president of the UP Congress Committee (UPCC).
As part of its latest plans, the state unit is also reviving the decade-old party newspaper, ‘‘Naya Bharat’’ which, it hopes, will propagate the party ideology and rev up the party machinery.