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Let us begin with Vidheyak, the public policy competition conducted by Bharath Society. Apparently, the participants were supposed to talk about increasing the involvement of the common citizen in elections. It was an unusual concept as we minions are very clear on our agenda of blindly serving the ultimate master. However, it was a great experience to learn about the electoral process of your country, the current challenges it faces and more importantly, how they can be addressed.

All the 6 teams that presented showed a great level of maturity in their analysis of the problem. It was clearly evident that all of them had put in a lot of effort in the collection of primary data, secondary research and synthesis of their results. What was also heartening was the genuine interest the participants appeared to have in addressing the core problem.

At the heart of the analyses by all teams was a demographic segmentation of the Indian voter, an analysis of the motivations and barriers for each of these segments to vote and how these can be used to improve voter turn-out. These were followed by different ways of marketing the need for voting a leader worth following to power. While each team had a unique approach, some ideas like using Surf Excel advertisements to encourage voting tickled a few ribs in the audience. It was a great effort by both the organizers and the participants and we wish them the best. Just so you know, the team from IIMA was placed first while Team Chanakya from IIMB came in a close second just beating Team Squadron from NMIMS.

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