With just five more weeks to go before the elections, the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) is stepping up its drive for volunteers.
Taking its existing political internship programme in Delhi a notch higher, the Mumbai chapter is now promising to make internships more “hands on” and “inclusive” to go beyond the party office desk to the polling booth itself.
The idea is to get them to experience the heat and dust of the Indian elections in return for their services.
The AAP is also expanding the ambit of its volunteers from just management and research background to individuals with creative skills for the party’s “buzz campaign” in the city. Targeted at youngsters in the age group of 18-25, the programme hopes to shortlist about 150 such interns for roles ranging from strategy and policy planning to creative content writing and directing promotional short movies.
Twenty-one-year-old IIT-Bombay student and AAP member, Pritesh Mittal, who is coordinating this initiative for AAP’s Mumbai North West candidate, Mayank Gandhi, said the programme which kicked off last week, includes a one-month internship for exposure to all levels of campaigning depending on their skills sets, interests and enthusiasm.
Siddharth Das, 25, another AAP member, said: “This internship’s USP would be that interns would not be desk-bound doing just office work, but get to be a part of the electoral campaign and have full freedom to take up any aspect of the campaign and in turn gain exposure to the political process and avail of an opportunity to make a difference.”
Sitting on a sofa in his party office-cum-election “war room” in Andheri, Gandhi, who is taking a breather from juggling his time between hectic party meetings, padyatras and door-to-door campaigning, feels these internships would help garner more volunteers needed to boost his campaign. “We are falling short of volunteers as there is little time left and a lot of ground to cover campaigning wise. We are hoping that the present set of about 25 volunteers grows to 400 and eventually 1,000 closer to the elections.”
Apart from getting a certificate of participation, an add-on incentive, the top 10 per cent of the interns would also be awarded a personal letter of recommendation from Mayank Gandhi acknowledging his or her skills.