India’s Lok Sabha Polls Takes Over The Web – To Vote Or Not To Vote?
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The upcoming Lok Sabha election buzz is all over the web. If you are online reading blogs then more often than not you will be seeing a banner ad with advani on it. And thats not all more and more websites are being launched keeping the upcoming elections in mind. So while some of them are puring providing information on elections and asking you to vote some are actually leveraging the upcoming elections to showcase their brands. Also with BJP already going all guns blazing on the web other parties are also keen on taking the jump and are starting with launching their websites.
Here is a lowdown on all the action thats pointing towards the upcoming polls:
Brands Leveraging the Upcoming Elections
Tata Tea – Jaagore.com – This has been by far the longest and the most vocal online and offline campaign leveraging the upcoming elections. The whole objective of the site is to ask people to vote and garner atleast 1 billion votes this elections. All in all this has been probably one of the best integrated campaigns Ive seen in a few years.
Idea Cellular – Myidea.co.in – This is the newest campaign to leverage the elections and has attracted trememndous traction in just 3 weeks of its launch. As the name suggests its an idea sharing platform for what change can be brought about in India. It has already garnered over 1500 ideas and over 1 lakh votes.
Websites Launched By Political Parties and Individuals For Polls
CPM Launches Website – BJP seems to have had its impact on other parties so much so that CPI(M), which was once bitterly opposed to computerisation in the country on the plea that it would result in job losses has launched its website www.vote.cpim.org. It becomes the first Left party in India to host such a site.
Locate your Polling Booth – Andhra Pradesh Election commissioner has launched a new website where voters from Hyderabad can search there polling booth locations. Voters can also retrieve this information via sms. The service is right now available to Hyderabad voters only and can be accessed from www.ceoandhra.in.
Public Interest causes and campaigns on the web
NoCriminals.org – This is an initiative to make sure that no candidates with criminal backgrounds get elected in the upcoming elections. The traction this campaign is recieving can be judged from its facebook page which has over 4,777 members. This group is created by well known VC Alok Mittal of Canaan partners who is also supporting this campaign.
Indiavoting.com – Insite Digital headed by Mr Amit Tripathi (Who is also the founder of id8labs) has launched www.indiavoting.com an edutainment site on Indian politics also leveraging the upcoming elections. This looks like a longer play than just this elections and gives comprehensive information on all the parties contesting.
We have showcased above web properties that are encouraging participation in the elections but there are some who don’t want us to vote:
Bleedindia.com – Well seeing is believing this site says everything opposite to what the other sites are proposing. The site asks you not to vote and focuses on those who have scammed India.
Check their intro below:
“So while the Times Of India tries to find new leaders for a new age (good luck gentlemen!), we focus instead on those who Bleed India; Masters of the Scam, Tigers of the Tightrope: Surely they deserve some acknowledgement of their genius – in staying above the law, beyond the law, in making it and in breaking it..wah! wah! Ladies and gentlemen…you have led us and yes you have bled us.”
While you may think Times of India might be pissed at this site Surprise Surprise! This site is owned by the times group itself. Check who is data here. Im not sure what the purpose of this site is but I saw its ad in today’s times publication mumbai mirror as well. God only knows what’s cooking here. Anyone have a clue?
Well vote or no vote this amount of buzz online is surely going to have its impact one way or another. The best impact being is that if the parties who are actually using the web medium do win then it will ratify the power of the web as an influential medium and one can then expect bigger budgets from corporates and from political parties in the future.
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well i saw the ad in the newspaper today.. At first i was puzzled too..
But slowly it did become clear.
Its pretty neat.. Theyre basically trying to mock the situation when we dont vote.. Its kind of a taunt. This is really the kind of thing that will make many a people realize that what really might happen if you do not vote.
I found it pretty neat. Would like to see other opinions too though.
Wanted to point out the UTV Bindass-led I Change, a CSR activity, whose first activity is Ungli Utha, a campaign targeted at getting as many young voters as possible to start voting. Out of roughly 312 million youth voters, only 12.5% actually vote. Our goal is to convert this statistic as far as possible. Would be great if you could update your post to include this information.
Our website is located here:
Oops, looks like your blog ate my URL
http://www.bindass.tv/ichange
Why BJP’s election campaign website’s(http://lkadvani.in/) link has been omitted in this article. Already print media / TV Channels are went against the nationalistic party BJP, it seems that now blogs are following the same.
Jai Hind.
Lots of youth movements also started pouring in. One of it is http://youthdemocrats.in
You can check this out..
Well, politicians have cast their web online as well. However, talking of ‘Public interest causes and campaigns’ on web, there are couple of other initiatives as well. Prominent among them is a Facebook group called ‘None of the Above’, which moots an idea of having an option in our democratic system where voters can reject candidates if the performance is not up to mark. Right now, we have no such clause like in some other thriving democracies and so there is no option for a voter who wants to register his protest through democratic system. Incusion of such clause would make voting mandatory too, a point rued by UTV also in an earlier comment.
Considering, the kind of politicians that are coming in public life, it is well worth to have such provision in our voting machine.
Hi Rajeev,
Nice post and I guess this was due keeping in mind the buzz around the elections.
We at LordsOfOdds have come up with our first offering around the elections. It is about creating a “Public Manifesto”, you can access the site at http://election.lordsofodds.com
The idea behind coming up with this site was to crowd source a manifesto. Its a platform to Ideate, opine and aggregate the various issues which the masses think our next government should focus on.
Also rather than to adopt a rating mechanism based only on the number of yes/no we have used an alternate weight-age system. The weights associated with each statement is an indicator of importance of the statement according to the user perception. It reflects how people consider a particular statement in comparison to other statements in the manifesto. It is not, the percentage of people who have said yes or no to it.
Would be looking forward to your feedbacks and suggestions
Thanks
Asutosh
http://election.lordsofodds.com
While, the Political parties sites are pure proganda about the parties them selves, its a waste of time going there.
I have gone through all the sites listed here and spent time going thru all of them.
1. Jaagore, while the ad campaign is quite awesome, and the companies branding is all well accepted. But the site lacs enough content to be truly called a Voter awarness platform, so while they awakened us, do not give us more than that and considering the amount of effort and money, 4.5 Lakhs registrations is quite not the thing you expect to see. But a good effort.
2. Myidea. Dont know what to write on this. Idea seems to be having an idea for everything. But I would tend to see this site with a pinch of salt. Its a great idea for promoting idea, what idea does beyond this is something we have to wait and watch. What post elections.
In fact for both these sites, what happens post elections.
The efforts of No Criminals and Indiavoting is more genuine and an internet usercan appreciate it more and is more in the interest of the community.
While No Criminals seems to be very focussed on the No criminal in politics aspect and does not appear to be a commercial effort, Indiavoting looks like a commercial effort.
No Criminal videos seem to be inspired from jaagore, but a good subject taken up. It is very commendable of Mr. Mittal to have created this, especially is a not for profit effort.
But having said that, the breadth of data and content on Indiavoting is far more structured and indepth than compared to any of the above mentioned sites. The games and cartoons on the site are worth watching.
But the big question what happens post elections to both these sites?
I would follow Nocrimnals and Indiavoting over the next few weeks and keep all posted on the same.
But at the moment…
Jaagore is the biggest in terms of awareness and traffic.
Indiavoting is the biggest in terms of the effort on the content.
Lets see who wins this battle.
Vikram Soni
Just my $0.02
Is BJP Nuts? – http://www.makulabs.com/blog/is-bjp-nuts