HYDERABAD: The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) plans to aggressively penetrate into the rural and urban areas across Telangana by expanding its network of ‘Shakhas’ in the run-up to its centenary in 2025.
Speaking at the RSS office at Barkatpura on Thursday, State General Secretary K Ramesh said that 4-5 villages would be grouped into village clusters across the State and a shakha would be held in each of these clusters. Of the 1,619 clusters across Telangana, shakhas are already running in over 1,000 clusters, he said.
In urban areas, including Tier-2 cities, 1,443 bastis (each with a population of 10,000) have been formed, of which shakhas were being held daily in 797 bastis and weekly shakhas in another 10 per cent of the bastis, Ramesh said. He expressed confidence that all these shakhas would be operational within two years.
“Earlier, mostly students used to attend shakhas regularly. In the last decade, we have seen an increase in the number of people of all age groups attending regularly. We have been running separate shakhas for school and college students, people settled in life and also retired persons. We want to establish more shakhas for farmers in villages and train them on different agricultural methods. In the cities, we are going to involve workers in organised and unorganised sectors in the “shramika karmika shakhas”,” he said.
Ramesh said that RSS was adopting 13 villages across the State to provide free education, promote temple activities, hold Swachh campaigns and socioeconomically empower self-help group women in these villages. After rolling out the campaigns in these villages, 40 more villages would be adopted, he said.
He said that several resolutions were passed during the general body meetings held in Ahmedabad from March 11 till 13.