Election Commissioner of India H.S. Brahma here on Friday said communication has the biggest impact on the State and Union governments like in all the 193 countries in the world.
Speaking on the “Effect of Communication of the Governance” Brahma said the role of Public Relations (PR) was paramount. Like the law and order, communication was the serious business for the government, he said, adding that communication impacts the society and business is run with the help of the communication.
Speaking as the chief guest at the two-day 7th Global Communication Conclave 2013 organised by Public Relations Council of India (PRCI), Brahma said he was keen on visiting Hyderabad. “Today every citizen is involved in Internet, Facebook, Skype and digital era of communication. The World Bank does not work from Washington. Thanks to internet as its staff works from all over the world. World is their office. Information of the 120 departments of the Union Government is available on Websites. We, at Election Commission very soon make information of 75 crore voters of the country available on the internet. Sitting at home they can check if their name was in the voters list, see if the name was written correctly. They can have details of their polling station. They can even see road map, directional maps to the polling stations. India with 120-crore population has 10 lakh polling stations. It will be a mammoth task to make these details available on online. Already Andhra Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh and many States’ information was available online. In about one-and-a-half year time, information of the voters of the entire country will be available online”, he said.
The Election Commissioner said apart from the governments, even political parties have been spending sizeable amounts on communication to popularize their party and candidates. Some 40% of election expenditure a candidate incurs goes on publicity and because of the explosion of communication, it puts pressure on governments, including Election Commission of India for more accountability.
Brahma also gave away PRCI Chanakya Awards. TAFE bagged Corporate Citizen of the Year Award, Bharat Lal Meena, an IAS officer from Karnataka for Good Governance and Public Administration, Mr. Anjani Kumar Agarwal with Young Visioinary of the Year Award, Dr. Vivek Mansingh from CISCO Bangalore Innovative Leadership, Padmashree Kumar Katkar, a journalist Media Personality of the Year Award, Ms. Varsha Staplkar from Maitreya Group of Companies Entrepreneur of the year award, Prof. H. Maheshapa, Vice Chancellore of VTU Belgaum Excellence in Busienss Communication and Prof. Mathew Hibberd from Universtity of Stirling, Scotland Excellence in Business Communicator Award.
Prof Arun Tiwari, who worked as Missile Scientist under Dr APJ Abdul Kalam, A.K. Goel, retired Special Chief Secretary, also spoke about communication beyond generations. (NSS)