Tuesday Brief

1 As per recent news item Election Commission (EC) is going to push several reforms during next year to streamline electoral process further. There are mainly 4 items on  the agenda , which are as follows:

• Linkage of Aadhar number with voter ID. This is basically to avoid bogus voting. There have been many cases bogus voting detected over the years, and there have been cases where someone is voting for dead person. This will also weed out duplications and misrepresentations in the electoral rolls. Additionally this will enable to vote   via internet, in case of remote voting rights to domestic migrant population. To bring out this reform, govt will need  first cabinet approval , and then parliament has to approve the amendments to section 14(B) of the RP act of 1951.—- Aadhar linkage and voter authentication are also considered critical to EC’s plans to works toward internet based voting and for giving remote voting rights to domestic migrant population. EC is assuring that the privacy and data safety related concerns would be protected.
• Getting 18 years olds registered as voters at the earliest Currently who turns 18 on January 1 can apply for register as a voter that year. EC seeking multiple registration dates, but is more likely that Govt will accept twice a year format initially. This will also require the amendment in Representation to People’s Act 1951.
• Ensuring Genders Neutral Voting Rights to Service Voters. A service voter is a person working in any of the armed forces. Presently only wife of a male service voter can cast the vote as service voter. This facility is not available to husband of female service voter. The current rules also do not permit children of service voter residing with him to be enrolled as service voter.. This amendment  will permit husbands and children of a service voter to be registered as voter on behalf a service voter. This will involve amendments to section 20(6) of the act.
• Offering Digital Voter ID to Freshly Registered Voters. This will make all new voter cards can be made downloadable like e Aadhar card model. This is expected to be launched on 5^th Jan 21, the National Voter day.

The EC has been arguing against these clauses pointing out that it amounted to denial of voting rights to many eligible voters. It has also recommended to law ministry that more gender neutral word, spouse, be used so that either husband or wife could cast vote, for female or male service voter.

In my opinion these amendments in  Representation of People Act are long over due, and govt should act immediately so that it can be implemented well before elections to various state assemblies which are due during 2021.

2 How to make use of modern technology during Covid 19 period has been amply demonstrated by Hindustan Unilever Ltd (HUL). They used the technology to their advantage during this tough times as they promoted the use of their App Shikhar, where Kirana Stores across the country could order their requirement. Presently about 3 lakh Kirana stores are using this app.

HUL is the biggest Consumer Goods company in India, and they are also mapping its sales initiatives to Mahatma Gandhi Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) and PM Kisan Yojana to understand where farmers have benefitted. They are also Google mobility to understand how consumers travel for any purpose. As per them whether the money is increased, which states are getting the benefit now and the fact that migrant population move, all these together can be vert potent. There are so many villages and some districts are not seeing so many instances of Covid and are actually quite normal. Therefore, to ensure that our execution over there was at the  highest and servicing to stores in that area was absolutely normal, they used the available technology. Before the pandemic HUL’s app covered nearly 25% of all towns with the population of 5 lakh and above. Now this have trebled.

The most critical bit on their app is it can communicate back to fulfilment. They have partnered with Google to move our distributors to cloud.

It is really heartening to note that company like HUL are using modern technology to fullest, to help them in serving the consumer.

Awaiting your comments/views/feed backs.

Anil Malik

Mumbai, India

29^th December 2020.