Democracy going digital in India

The 15th Lok Sabha elections had almost 40% voters under the age cap of 35 yrs. With the rising use of internet and mobile phones across India, a majority of the voters this time were hooked on to these digital media to not only gather information on the constituencies & candidates, but also to express their opinions and hold a dialogue with fellow voters and political parties. I read somewhere that about 4 million unique users searched the net for information on politics, politicians and elections in April.

Digital tools like bulk-calling, tele-surveys, videos on youtube, websites focussed on elections and the likes were initiated by political parties, whereas, online portals with information and discussion forums, online forms to help you register for voting came into existence to get to the young Indian voter.

A few interactive tools used by political parties were:

The SuperCaller: A digital tool used to make multiple phone calls a day to inform voters was used by Congress (Jyotiraditya Scindia in Guna in Madhya Pradesh) and BJD candidates in Orissa.

The ElectionTracker: A web-based service that crawls the net, aggregates information on parties and politicians, and provides a meaningful analysis of the data.

Videos of BJP and Congress were also floated on youtube

Some of the interactive programs which came into existence were:

Tata Tea’s Jaago Re campaign which not only educated & encouraged people to vote, but also provided a platform for people to register to vote, get updates on their voter registration status and get voting & election related news from their respective areas.

Lifeblob.com, (a website that runs a social timeline service – a form of digital diary that maps the social media that subscribers share on to a timeline), created timelines for L.K.Advani & Narendra Modi.

Google India Election Centre, where non-government agencies collaborated with Google to upload data that would help voters find their constituencies online by keying in their address and access information about the current MP and candidates.

Well, that’s the start of democracy going the digital way in India :)