“The Jaagte Raho! campaign is the need of the hour,” said chief guest Mr NR Narayana Murthy, Chairman and Chief Mentor, Infosys, who is also on the advisory board of the campaign. This single line was an encouraging reward for the day and night backbreaking work put in by the twenty-odd Jaagte Raho team and volunteers to flag off the campaign in this successful launch at 6pm on 15 December 2009.

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The evening at Government’s Arts and Science College, Bangalore, saw an atmosphere charged with energy, enthusiasm, and nerves. In spite of thunderous dark clouds threatening to play spoil sport an extremely high-scoring India-Sri Lanka cricket match, the launch saw a phenomenal response. About 500 people including election officials, community members, Janaagraha’s well-wishers from the corporate world and media turned up at the venue to support the launch of Jaagte Raho! initiative. Even a chilly drizzle couldn’t get the dignitaries out of their seats till they had flagged off the campaign with full enthusiasm. The panel was jointly chaired by Mr NR Narayana Murthy, Ramesh and Swati Ramanathan, the co-founders of Janaagraha and Mr BV Kulkarni, Joint Chief Electoral Officer.

At the launch, Joint Chief Electoral Officer for the State, Mr BV Kulkarni voiced out his concerns on the poor quality of voter lists that is a primary cause for the poor turnout on the day of polling. If people are registered correctly as per their current place of residence, deleting non-resident voters, voter turnout figures would give an accurate picture of the people’s opinion. The campaign is fully endorsed by the ECI office which recognises the importance of such a system of citizens.

The launch of the campaign also marked the Eighth anniversary of Janaagraha’s Journey to Public Change. It also established the relevance and criticality of a campaign of such nature and magnitude. After three years, Bangalore will finally elect its local government in the upcoming BBMP elections early next year.

This campaign comes in time to encourage Bangaloreans to better their dismal voting records. This, obviously, is no easy task, but the team of Jaagte Raho! is not deterred. Janaagraha is creating a network of citizen volunteers or Area Voter Mitras who will work in their neighbourhoods to increase voter registration to 90 per cent and voter turnout to 60 per cent. Over the next year, the Jaagte Raho! campaign aims to create at least one Area Voter Mitra (AVM) per polling part, the smallest political unit as identified by the Election Commission of India (ECI), who could actively associate with the ECI to clean up the voter list. The task ahead is challenging, since this means that only Bangalore city will have a total of close to 5000 AVMs who will work within their area to help people register to vote and cast their vote in an informed manner. AVMs will aid this process by conducting a door-to-door drive to clean up the voter list, registering and deleting community members as the case may be.

To find out more on how to become an Area Voter Mitra, CLICK HERE.