Covid-19: BJP, RSS nudged to act when faced with mass exodus of migrants

The BJP's penchant for numbers tempted Nadda to fix a target: Mobilising 10 million party workers to feed 50 million people of the country every day

If Amit Shah jumpstarted his innings as Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) president in 2014 with a record-breaking membership drive, the Covid-19 crisis and the concomitant fallout of the lockdown posed the first big test for J P Nadda, Shah’s successor. His reflexes — as that of the BJP and the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) fraternity — kicked in on March 26, two days after Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced the lockdown.

Nadda directed the BJP-ruled states to create roti banks — a concept borrowed from a Delhi partyman, Rajkumar Bhatia, who started mass production and distribution of rotis in his