After achieving the target of being the largest political party in the world, the BJP is aiming to be ‘the most information networked party’ as it prepares to unveil digital libraries in its Raipur and Bhopal offices, next month. Similar e-libraries would be set up across its all BJP offices in the country.
"The plan is to equip all offices of the BJP with e-libraries which would turn a definitive reference point for the best of researchers," said party general secretary and library and documentation-in-charge Anil Jain.
Jain said Raipur and Bhopal offices digital libraries will be inaugurated the next month. The libraries would have national as well as international works and an in-depth archives. There will be digital and physical libraries across all party offices and a mobile application from state to Mandal level which would give access to all contents in the libraries, said Jain.
Answering a question on the accessibility to the libraries, the BJP leader said it would be only on the basis of the membership but "free of cost". "The party has decided that library will be set up at all organisational structures and be an essential part of all offices", he said.
In a way, those in-charge of increasing 'the knowledge power' of the BJP are to dig deep and "almost resurrect" party's entire history from old files, films, photographs, people, party leaders, public meetings, anecdotes and 'sweatsweetbitter memories' of its 'struggle' before it is condensed it in a digitalised form.
After achieving the tag of being the largest political party in the world, it would now also try to be "the most networked" political entity in the country where one could find any sundry information about the party with a touch of the mouse.
Digitalisation of its history apart, other facets of 'modernisation' of party would take an estimated 11 crore BJP workers to their leaders across the country by way of video conferencing, fax facilities and realtime exchanges of information through internet.
The digital libraries networked with each other will also give the BJP its all records of past poll programmes, profile of candidates, campaign advertisements and CDs. "If we have these ready with us during election time, we may arrive at good decisions", said another BJP leader and headquarters-in-charge Arun Singh.
He said more than anything the effort of digitisation would help "ideological penetration".
The party is collecting photographs, and speeches of local senior leaders when they were young, details of their participation in the party and election work. The elderly leaders of the party at the local level would be visited by the party members to connect and collect information from them. also visit their
"This will make the emotional connect with workers who would be happy to remember how their party grew in the past," the BJP Secretary said.