GHMC polls: Know your corporator

Students from Aurora Degree College have been conducting various activities — from second-hand book sales to organising organic bazaars. But it was one novel idea which is now making news and has  earned the respect of everyone present in Hyderabad.

One of the hottest political debates in the city currently revolves around the nail-biting question: “Who will win the upcoming Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation elections?” But if you are as ignorant as 70 per cent of the people that the students interviewed, then your answer will remain: “I don’t know... I have no idea who my current corporator is!”

Quite a shock, considering it’s these “unknown” corporators who run the city.
The 150 wards under the GHMC are directly related to the roads one travels on every day, the garbage collected from one’s doorstep, traffic one can’t stop cribbing about and even the functioning of schools and basic necessities such as water and electricity.

And that’s exactly why 30 students from the Entrepreneurial Development (ED) cell of Aurora College felt it was important for people to know who runs their city, especially since many students from their college are going to be first-time voters this year.

“I was too young to vote during the last GHMC elections (2009), but this time, I am prepared and well-informed,” says Prithvi Reddy, one of the members of the ED CELL.

Even though the idea for such a website is not unique, it’s the thought behind it that makes all the difference.

“Before setting up the website, 20 of us (students) conducted a door-to-door survey, where we spoke to 300 people about GHMC and their operations; 70 per cent of them were unaware who the current corporator is,” says the 20-year-old.

“It was quite a mammoth task for us to come with a common platform for the elections because the information is diverse, yet not segregated to make it easy to access,” adds Prithvi.

The students visited the GHMC offices regularly and spoke to representatives of Congress, BJP, TRS and the TD.

“The members of Congress and BJP understood our social media approach and were more than willing to help us. It was this information assimilated over a course of 30 days that you now see on the website ‘Kaun Banega Corporator’, which is functional in association with Geo Map Systems Pvt Ltd And U-FERWAS,” says Prithvi.

Kaun Banega Corporator or KBC, a name students zeroed in on for no particular reason, is divided into three phases.

“Phase 1 allows citizens to rate the performance of each of the previous terms corporators. Phase 2 gives basic information of the nominated candidates of various political parties and will be put up before elections. Phase 3 is a follow-up on the pre-poll promises of the winning candidates and their success rate,” says Prithvi.

“Though the website has been running only for the past two weeks, the interest generated has been tremendous. The Congress and the BJP do want us to share information with them when Phase 2 and 3 start to function as it will help them in the long run,” he adds.
 

The idea behind this initiative is simple, “Know who you are voting for and why”. “One of the problems faced during these elections is the poor turnout. We put in four to five hours every day so that people can now make informed decisions and not hesitate to vote due to lack of information about their candidates,” he says.

So next time when you are a participant of the nail-biting debate of ‘Kaun Banega Corporator?’, thanks to the ground work done by 30 students, you don’t need to draw a blank stare anymore. And oh, the current commissioner of GHMC is Dr B. Janardhan Reddy (IAS). We are sure you know that by now!