The world’s largest democracy is heading to the polls in a few weeks’ time. It will be the country’s first all-out digital election, by which I mean that it will be the first time digital media like blogs, Facebook, Orkut, YouTube and Twitter will be harnessed on a massive scale. During the unfortunate November 2008 terrorist attacks in Mumbai, the world watched as the eventsunfolded day by day on Twitter. It is time for Indians to channel their energy in a much more positive direction now, and they are certainly taking the bull by the horns, if initial indications are anything to go by.
Gaurav Mishra has started
a wiki that documents digital initiatives, blog coverage and media coverage surrounding India’s 2009 General Elections. The list there is growing larger by the day. He’s also written a
great summary of the main corporate campaigns focussed on the elections in
Global Voices.
When Barack Obama and John McCain were contesting for the post of President of the United States over the last year or so, the entire world tracked the successes and failures of the two, and observed as Obama strode ahead, eventually getting elected to the post. It is by now no secret that his campaign’s extensive efforts in reaching out to the new generation of voters as well as all those who were tech-savvy, were largely responsible for his success. (Read Edelman’s summary of his social media successes
here).
I think India is on track to at least try and replicate some of that. And I say that in a good way, because politicians the world over should learn from the US’ experience with digital media during their elections. I say that also knowing the diverse nature of India’s population on many counts: education, employment, race, religion, gender and so on, a country where travelling a few hundred miles can take you to a different world even if it is the same country, and a country whose
recent economic growth fights head-to-head with it’s teeming problems of poverty, illiteracy and malnourishment, among others.
I say that because today
news spread that popular Bollywood film director Karan Johar got a host of stars to appear in a video encouraging young people to vote, a la
Google’s video with Hollywood stars along the same lines for the US general elections a few months ago. (The video hasn’t yet been released on the internet as I write this).
I say that because 4 years ago, I lived in Bangalore and today I received an email from an elected MP of the
Rajya Sabha (an Independent candidate) endorsing the candidature of someone else for the position of MP of Bangalore South constituency – a first. The email was informative – not rambling and full of marketing schlop, and also pointed me to
his blog (another first, I haven’t been emailed by a political candidate before, leave alone one that has a blog).
Obviously my first reaction was to wonder how they got my email (I must have filled in some form or the other at some point during my stay there), but when I saw this at the bottom of the email I didn’t think it mattered:
We combined and used all databases we could access to reach all Bangaloreans. If you find this email intrusive and an invasion of your privacy, please accept our sincere apologies and we request you to click here to unsubscribe yourself from further emails.
I’m not going to unsubscribe myself from those emails for now, even though I can’t vote and I’m certainly not a Bangalorean anymore. Because I’m very keen to see how these elections play out as far as digital media is concerned. Because it’s a first for India.
One Size Fits One 