Let's play the snake and ladder game of politics

MUMBAI, INDIA: The forthcoming general elections in India would probably be remembered for the way it has used the virtual space to reach out to the people.

Unlike in the past, most of the political parties are giving prominence to Internet and mobile phone - websites, blogs, social networking groups, SMS... the campaign has embraced the hi-tech era.

But ironically the the tech-savvy generation next is more or less ignorant about the intricacies of Indian politics and democratic system. As a result, there prevails a wide information gap on the subject among these young voters.

Indiavoting.com, a portal that focuses on the forthcoming parliamentary elections, aims to bridge this information gap using games, puzzles, crosswords, cartoons and trivia.

It was quite recently that Insite Digital, a next-generation media company based in Mumbai, launched Indiavoting.com.

“The site is focused on the upcoming polls keeping in view two areas – delimitation of constituencies and the Internet penetration,” says Amit Tripathi, Insite Digital's managing director. Insite Digital is a sister concern of Id8labs, the Interactive and digital marketing services company.

“After the delimitation of constituencies in urban areas, it was found that urban youths have 20 per cent less knowledge or information on the electoral process compared to rural youths,” adds Tripathi.

According to Tripathi, since the youths are predominately on Internet and websites, they also have huge influence on the elections. However, he feels these young people lack knowledge on election and political system and there's need to create awareness on the subject.

Indiavoting.com's features include cartoons, jokes, quizzes and games. In particular, talking of games, the site features two games – Politicking, the snake and ladder game, while the other is a crossword game called Politically Cross. Presently, these two games are live on site and while seven other games will be added later on.

Politicking features current Prime Minister Manmohan Singh taking on BJP's prime ministerial candidate L K Advani. While the user plays this game, he/she will be asked questions based on Indian democratic, political system and historic events.

Other features include, 'Vot-A-Meter' for candidate's vote percentage rating, 'Showcase' for images and videos. 'Politalks' is about parties and political leaders' views, while 'Elec-toons' showcases cartoons from across India and so forth.

In addition, users can post comments and messages to local respective representatives and also learn about local constituencies.

“It's built on open source platform using Drupal's content management tool powered by seven MySQL servers for storing data, and also uses Advanced Google Analytics for quick search facility. Objective of open source is mainly for cost-effectiveness and also keeping in mind the portal's future scalability and content,” explains Tripathi.

In less than a week from the launch, it has about 55,000 registered users with 80,000 comments. “The new video feature will be soon available on the site where three servers will be dedicated for the task. Under the VoteYatra brands, videos of voters sharing their experiences and views will be shot across India during the 30-40 days duration of polls and then it will be available on site,” informs Tripathi.

Tripathi hopes that other media also take up such initiatives to educate youths using technology platforms like social networking sites and Internet.

“IndiaVoting.com is not affiliated to any political party or group. It is playing an educator's role - creating awareness and sharing knowledge among the youths using the Internet,” he asserts.