Beginning today, Congress members are to be subjected to the harsh grind of students. A `National Training Institute' to be headed by CWC member Pranab Mukherjee will impart ``across-the-board training'' to the vast multitude of party cadres. Apparently, Congress president Sonia Gandhi feels a dose of rigorous teaching is just what the party needs.

And in tune with what MNCs do, she has asked senior colleagues to regularly update training methods in the 113-year-old organisation. Congress cadres will be taught in Delhi, and five other centres where the institute will have regional branches, the virtues of teetotalism, manual labour, social reform, wearing ``certified khadi'', meaning government-produced khadi, use of swadeshi goods and giving up practices like owningexcess land and fudging tax returns.

In addition, Congressmen will be told to turn aggressive in defending secularism, and the party itself, visit slums, interact with leprosy patients and even dig canals and drains in villages if it comes to that. Mukherjee and his team of five will also update the cadres on the Congress ideology and what the party stands for.

Entrusted with this onerous task are Mukherjee, who will head the `Training Institute', Vasant Sathe, Vayalar Ravi, Chandrajit Yadav, Girija Vyas and DP Ray who doubles up as the Institute's member-secretary. The regional centres will come up in cities representing the north, east, west, south and north-eastern regions of the country.

And since automation is the new buzzword in the party, members could even be asked to take up computer courses. Some signs of corporatisation are already in place. Laptops are a frequent sight, economic cell secretary Jairam Ramesh is an avid user, Windows 95 is the favourite software, more Internet connectionshave been asked for and cellphones are more in use than desk phones. The process, Sonia hopes, will be completed in the coming months.

Helping the Training Institute will be an Ethics Committee which is expected to play the role of a ``thought police''. The Congress claims it is the first party to have set up such a committee, the basis for which was laid by PV Narasimha Rao who asked a panel to come up with a code of conduct.

A code was then suggested which will now be formalised by the Ethics Committee. Heading this panel is the ``Mr Clean'' in the Congress, CWC member AK Antony. He has five others to help him, Manmohan Singh, SB Chavan, Murali Bhandare, Margaret Alva and Ahmed Patel as the member-secretary.

The Ethics Committee will deal with ``any complaint of undesirable behaviour of any Congressman'', implying that nobody is above the panel. Also, the party drew a distinction, as spokesperson Salman Khurshid said, between discipline and ethics. ``The DAC looks into anti-party activity but a lot oftimes, a member's behaviour may bring the party disrepute without actually being anti-party,'' Khurshid added.

Antony is therefore expected to play big brother in the Congress and see that Mukherjee's efforts bear fruit. Looking down on Dalits and backwards is out, as is sneering or leching at women. In essence, Antony has to turn the Congress around from a party with an image of cultivating lumpens into one of grooming role models for society, by applying ``objective parameters for high standards''.

ND Tiwari, who almost petered into retirement, has been asked to head the Petitions Committee in the party. He will look into petitions relating to ``organisational election disputes'', meaning restoring inner-party democracy of sorts. Tiwari has KH Muniappa, Vidya Stokes, Manoranjan Bhakta, BK Handique and Lalit Bhasin, as the member-secretary, to help him. The composition of these three panels and their nature of work are a firm indicator of the business-like air Sonia wants to restore in the Congress.