A.R. Rahman To Educate People

The electoral office in the national capital is trying to rope in playback singer A.R. Rahman to educate people about the benefits of elections and improve voter turnout for the Nov 29 assembly election.“Rahman has already given us permission to use one of his compositions for our awareness campaign. Now we are trying to rope him in personally to campaign for us and tell people to come out and vote,” said Satbir Silas Bedi, chief electoral officer of Delhi.

“We have written to him about this and expect a reply very soon,” Bedi told IANS.

The electoral office is using one of Rahman’s compositions, “Pappu can’t dance…” from the Bollywood movie “Jaane Tu Ya Jaane Na” for creating TV, radio and print adds to encourage voters to cast their ballots.

The campaign aims at creating awareness among 12 different segments of people who generally don’t vote.

“We want to create a sense of shame among people but tell this in a humorous way. Bollywood songs are a great means to reach the masses and in particular the youngsters.

“As a sequel to the awareness campaigns, we will hold few programmes with Mr. Rahman as the key attraction,” she said.

Bedi, however, clarified that the electoral office has made it clear to the singer that he will not get any remuneration for this.

“We cannot pay anything. We expect him to do this as a national responsibility. But lets see if he has time for this,” she added.

The voter turnout has been dwindling in Delhi over a period of time. While the 2002 assembly election saw little less than 50 percent turn out, the civic election last year saw 43 percent turn out.

There are 10.7 million eligible voters in the capital.