“Once the Jaago Re campaign to energize urban voters began, we realized a lot of first-time voters do not have enough information about candidates,” says Pranav Bhasin, co-founder and CEO, Aetas Technologies Pvt. Ltd, which launched the website Lifeblob.com. “Also, we had seen how digital tools were used extensively in the US campaign, and were able to make contact with the media cell of the BJP, which helped us showcase a timeline for L.K. Advani,” says Bhasin, whose company went on to build timelines for BJP politicians such as Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi. “Since we opened up the L.K. Advani timeline in March, we have got about 80–90 posts a week.”
Veiled power: Voters at a polling centre during the general election in Rajasthan. Arko Datta / Reuters
Another Mumbai-based organization, Democracy Connect, offered research support to members of Parliament, or MPs, and helped them initiate dialogues with voters and local government bodies by preparing background papers on prominent issues and highlighting the action points that MPs should focus on.
In this general election, the not-for–profit group was the knowledge partner for television channel CNN-IBN for a show that connected young voters with young parliamentarians.
Rajeev Gowda, professor of economics and social sciences at the Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore, and Sanjay Jha, a management consultant, floated Hamaracongress.com, an independent portal that aggregated online media content for the Congress and offered opinions and analysis on it.
Seasoned players such as Google also used the election to exploit the political fever online. Apart from setting up websites and blogs, the two main political parties, the BJP and the Congress, aired Internet videos on Youtube.com. The process was facilitated by the Indian team of the global technology giant.
Google helped set up a YouTube video for the Election Commission, or EC, showcasing the training of EC officials and the format adopted to administer and manage the 15th Lok Sabha election. For voters, there was Google India Election Centre, an online resource centre, where at least half-a-dozen 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 aspiring candidates.
“We shared the content of the Indian Election Commission’s YouTube offering with South African government officials who were keen to understand the model followed by India,” says Jaitly. “Even globally, the visibility for Indian election-related content is very high.”
Making business sense
Even as these tools and services helped political parties and candidates tap the digital audience in a meaningful way, the big question is what the companies will do with the tools now that the election is over. Is it possible to build a revenue-earning model around these services, and can these be used by corporate clients to glean consumer trends?Ramesh Ramanathan,
Co-founder, Janagraha
“As politicians move from a commoditized communication model to a more targeted one, there is tremendous potential to use digital tools, but I am sceptical about whether it will be possible to create revenue models around such opportunities,” says Ramesh Ramanathan, co-founder, Janaagraha, a Bangalore-based non-government organization that works in areas of citizenship and democracy.
The companies in question, however, are optimistic that their tools will be of use to corporate clients. Some of them have even identified potential areas.