Power of 49 – to unleash the power of women voters in India
December 29, 2013
The ‘Power of 49’ is the latest initiative of Tata Sons in partnership with Tata Global Beverages, that has been running the ‘Jaago Re’ campaign since 2007, to inspire social awakening in India by encouraging people to look within for solutions to national issues. Over a period of time, this campaign has addressed issues like elections and corruption, and ‘Jaago Re’ has today come to be recognised as one of the most iconic campaigns in the country.
The ‘Power of 49’ campaign seeks to address women’s issues. It seeks to ‘unleash the power of a 100 million informed women voters’ – to awaken Indian women to the power of their vote (the Power of 49 per cent of the electorate, which women constitute), with the expectation that a more informed and participative female electorate will ensure that the system responds more diligently to women’s issues, thereby positively impacting national development. Women don’t realise they constitute 49 per cent of electorate and most often they believe their vote does not make a difference leading them to cast a family vote. For the first time, a movement that seeks to awaken women to the fact that if they can exercise a collective, independent and informed vote and no political system can ignore them anymore.
Through this initiative, Tata Sons intends to leverage the strength of the Tata group to amplify and create mass impact of Jaago Re’s latest campaign through the communication assets of over 100 companies and subsidiaries.
The media campaigns being planned will be very interactive, and of course, will be completely apolitical and will steer absolutely clear of any political overtones. Tata Sons also intends to simultaneously launch a large and significant internal campaign that galvanisesemployees across the group.
Each of us can support the process through the following steps:
- Make everyone AWAKEN to the power of women
- Help women TABLE and VOICE their wants
- Make politicians TAKE NOTE of women’s wants
- An INFORMED and EMPOWERED female electorate vote
There is a need to undertake branding/ messaging/ volunteering to create an informed voter base through partnerships.
TIL is firmly supportive of this initiative as underlined by MD Mr NN Tata, who has stated, “The Power of 49 is an important initiative of the group and it has my complete support. I am sure our teams at locations in India will seize the opportunity to play an active role towards making this movement a success.”
Giving back to society has been a cornerstone of the Tata way of doing business, and coupled with the current agenda of driving gender sensitivity and volunteering within the Tata group, we can, at the individual company level and work group levels can make a contribution that can have a multiplier effect across the communities around us. Let us all join hands in support of the Power of 49!
