About 30,000 schoolchildren pitched in their mite to strengthen the power of the vote. Seldom have the little yellow cards of India Post found such use for a greater common good than it did in the classrooms of Hosur.
In a fortnight, parents in Hosur will receive a postcard from their children, with a message – to vote with a conscience – and without the stain of bribe for vote.
On Thursday, the children sat in their classrooms and wrote postcards to their parents, under the Systematic Voters Education For Electoral Participation (SVEEP) campaign of the Election Commission.
The seed for the en masse post-card-to-the-parent campaign was drawn from the Valsad municipality experience in Gujarat, where 17,000 postcards were sent by children to their parents during elections, says Senthil Raju, Sub Collector, Hosur.
A postcard from a child can be very persuasive for parents. And, for children, this may well be the initiation into the electoral process, he adds.
Though the administration has given a model letter to schools, children were encouraged to pen down their own little note to their parents.
Around 20 government and private schools participated in the exercise. In addition, select college students volunteered to write postcards back home.
These postcards by children may well propel the small town of Hosur to the Guinness Book.
“It was an expensive proposition to get observers. Hence, we videographed the entire exercise that will now be sent as an open entry,” he told The Hindu .
Message from children may propel the small town of Hosur to the Guinness Book
