Congress gets a new data analytics department

Congress has recently been revamping many of its departments. Among one of them is the Party’s computer cell. The computer cell has now been turned into the ‘data analytics’ department. The announcement of this change was made on 5th February by Rahul Gandhi.

Excited to announce a “Data Analytics” dept under the leadership of Praveen Chakravarty to effectively use “Big Data”. pic.twitter.com/hvOBVZILlk

— Office of RG (@OfficeOfRG) February 5, 2018

The new data analytics department

This new department will join the different cells like the All India Professionals’ Congress, the Unorganised Workers’ Congress, among others. This is a huge step ahead for Congress and embracing change. The person who will head the functions of the data analytics department as Chairman for Congress will be Mr. Praveen Chakravarty. The previous head of the computer cell was Viswajit Singh, who belonged to the Kapurthala royal family who died last year.

Praveen Chakravarty was previously an investment banker and an Angel investor. He has worked with Congress before in 2010, with the Unique Identification Authority of India. Chakravarty has previous experience working with huge companies like IBM and Microsoft. He has also worked with a number of start-ups.

Although this may seem like an innocent change of name, it signifies that the road to the Lok Sabha elections is being paved. Congress’ approach and method might shift to get the edge over BJP. This change in direction depends on how Congress uses its tools at hand. BJP has also used big data in the past and over time big data has become quite important to Indian politics. Big data will also influence the party’s decision-making.  These changes to the functioning of the party will definitely prove to be useful. Amongst all the criticism that Congress has garnered and the backlash it still continues to receive this is one ray of sunlight. But one must ask if these changes are long overdue and why did it take Congres this long?