Vote Report India was featured today in a Deccan Herald story on the use of digital technologies in the Indian elections.

Here is the full text of the story –

Campaigning virtually
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The impact of Internet and mobile technologies on the election campaign has been immense. Metrolife takes a look at the digital initiatives

Most of us at some point or the other have been guilty of whiling away time in front of the social networking sites, exploring profiles with the only legitimate contribution of increasing the hit rate of the sites. But did you ever imagine that the same exercise could end up making us a responsible citizen and an informed voter?
The urban youth is fast taking to the digital media as a means of gathering information on election, so the political parties are pulling up their socks and catering to this cross-section for the month-long general elections to the 15th Lok Sabha.

According to Gaurav Mishra, the co-founder of Vote Report India and also a researcher on Internet and society in emerging countries at Georgetown University, Washington, “This year is primed to be India’s first digital elections as India’s 714 million voters prepare to elect their 543 representatives. They are witness to a range of digital initiatives from political parties, civil society organisations, media houses and even corporates. As a result, some observers are calling it India’s first digital elections. It’s also a test case for the effectiveness of digital technologies in the emerging world.”

Taking the lead is the BJP online initiative through L K Advani, who in his blog, drawing over 150 comments candidly states: “In my own political life spanning six decades, I have enthusiastically embraced every new communication technology — from the early simple Casio digital diary to iPod and iPhone.”

And this phenomenon is giving rise to different aspects of online campaigning that are getting bigger and more intense and definitely more creative.

According to Gaurav’s report, some of the popular online initiatives include Rajesh Jain’s Netcore Solutions, which is running the SMS campaign for the BJP, and has bought an inventory of one billion SMSes for the campaign.

The campaign for Number Criminals in Politics (nocriminals.org) aims to ensure that no political party gives tickets to candidates with criminal antecedents in the 2009 elections. The campaign is effectively using social media
platforms like Facebook and YouTube to spread its message.

Till now, the most successful campaign has been the Jaago Re (jaagore.com) in association with Janaagraha, which started in September 2008 to initiate a voter registration drive in colleges and corporates in 35 cities across the country and to register four million voters.

Says Ashika, involved with Jaago Re and Janaagraha website that does online profiling for candidates standing for election in Bangalore.

“We target urban youth who have access to Internet and SMS and have profiled 85 candidates standing for elections from the three constituencies in Bangalore: North, South and Central, in a very non-partisan way. Not all the candidates have the means to reach out to the public through traditional campaigning, so our website gives all that information including, candidate nomination, assets, criminal records etc.”

And the youth of the City seem to lap it all up. Says Karthik Shetty, a software professional who has been avidly following the elections, “The parties have posted their manifestoes on their websites, which can be read and understood at leisure, making information about their work available on a click.”

The online brouhaha does not end with elections. Many of these web portals are looking at long term transparency and accountability once the government is elected.

Says Gaurav, “Vote Report India (votereport.in) is a collaborative citizen-powered election monitoring platform for the 2009 elections. It aims to not only provide the most complete picture of public opinion in India during the month-long elections, but will also work on increasing transparency and accountability in the Indian election process.”