Vote & vote right, Cos tell staff

If there is a higher turnout of white collar voters, particularly the younger ones, in the coming elections, one perhaps will have to thank the wake-up call given by interest groups that have taken up on themselves to whip up awareness and counter voter apathy.

Though initially referred to as surrogate advertising when it hit the small screen in September 2008, the Jaago Re campaign by Tata Tea and Janaagraha, a Bangalore-based NGO, is one such attempt that seems to be working. There are several more, run by senior private sector executives, which are trying to make a difference through other means.

Jaago Re has logged about four lakh voter registrations despite only 50 corporates signing up. But it is still a drop in the ocean of 714 million voters registered to vote in the 2009 polls. Nevertheless, the campaign has caught the imagination of corporates and other interest groups, which for the first time seem to have been moved into action.

“We want to do something and make a difference,” said Amar Krishnamurthy, MD of a food processing firm in Bangalore, who set up www.smartvote.in to prepare dossiers on election candidates and brought together five other NGOs, including Janagraha, to disseminate poll-related information.

Interestingly, the IT community in the tech capital, dubbed the non-voting Bangalorians by former chief minister HD Kumaraswamy, just as a host of other sections have been egged into action. Yahoo, Oracle, Infosys, Wipro, Google, Accenture (India), Cisco and Tata, just to name a few, have got into the act and asked their employees to turn out in large numbers to vote.

At Infosys, for instance, a voter awareness campaign has been running in the company over the past few months. A group of employees has taken up on themselves to don the role of Jaago Re ambassadors and spread the campaign on the campus.

“Empowering employees to participate in the elections for better governance has always been the practice at Infosys,” said CFO V Balakrishnan.

Aravind Sitaraman, vice-president & managing director, Cisco Development Organisation, said: “The IT industry suffers from two handicaps. Firstly, mobile workers are either not registered in place of domicile or not registered at all. Secondly, they are not motivated to vote and hence lack the will to getting registered. We strongly believe that we need to overcome them.”

ICICI Prudential Life is yet another company that has been inspired by the campaign. Bhargav Dasgupta, executive director said, “We believe that our responsibility towards our nation begins by encouraging our employees to exercise their franchise. In tune with this philosophy, we are supporting the Jaago Re campaign.”

As part of its corporate citizenship agenda, consulting major Accenture (India), is running an internal campaign and up facilitation desks on its campuses manned by representatives of Janagraha to enable employees to register for voting.

A host of companies are just warming up to the idea. Praveen Sood, CFO, Hindustan Construction Company, said, “There is nothing as yet, but we are putting together a team to urge our employees to vote.”

Sharat Potharaju, head communications and marketing at Jaago Re, pointed out that it is just a beginning and the target over the next five years is to reach one billion registered voters through the campaign. But the fact that the programme has touched 50 corporates since its launch in September 2008 is a pointer there is still hope for many more to join in.