Romancing Internet with political equations

MUMBAI, INDIA: Yes, the election is for real. But the way virtual space is being used to reach the masses makes forthcoming general elections in India the most 'tech-savvy' one in the political and democratic history of the country.

From political parties to candidates, everyone is embracing the Net with great vigour. While some have redesigned their existing websites, others have launched new ones with the elections in mind.

Apart from its official site, www.congress.org.in, Congress party has launched a special site for the general elections - www.voteforcongress.in. It has also launched a site, www.soniagandhi.org, for their leader, Sonia Gandhi.

And, Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has www.bjp.org apart from L K Advani's special website, www.lkadvani.in, that is being publicised on almost all websites. PLus Advani has a personal blog too. Then there is www.cpim.org, the website launched by the CPI(M).

Even smaller and regional parties have followed this new trend. Shiv Sena's www.shivsena.org, Trinamool Congress' www.trinamoolcongress.com, Telugu Desam Party's www.telugudesam.org, to mention a few.

Keeping the regional ideology, most of these sites have full-content in local language that restricts its exposure to users from other regions, however.

This apart, parties are aggressively using SMS, online advertisements and promotions, as also the conventional methods to influence voters. Is it that the Obama syndrome spreading to the Indian electoral landscape?

Not exactly, feels JuxtConsult's co-founder, Mrutyunjay Misra.

“We will be wrong, if we compare their (parties) effort to the 'Obama effect', because Internet penetration in India is very low compared to USA or UK, where it is a major channel of communication, mass engagement and influences decisions.”

Talking about parties' portals, Misra says most of them haven't followed any set standards of user experience, usability, visual appearance, interactivity and content updates. Some websites lack the proper navigation system that causes long page-scrolling for reading content. And in many, there is no provision for users' comments and suggestions.

Interestingly, Misra points out that political parties' websites still need to go a long way if we compare them against the best practices of web development.

“Parties' websites lack the efforts to engage the youth audience and appears more of plain vanilla brochure websites,” he quips.

According to Tonic Media's business director Sudish Balan, there's little doubt at the moment that of all the parties, BJP website is the one with more depth and it is also the frequently updated one.

“Since BJP has a dedicated team of individuals spread across multiple states (the IT cell), the results are showing. Off the rest, Congress has only recently started paying attention to the online property while CPI(M) website seems more like a blog and not a professional website. And the others are mere laggards,” Balan says.

Coming to the personal sites and blogs of leaders, there are many more including that of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, (www.manmohansingh.org), Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi (www.narendramodi.in) and Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister YS Rajasekhara Reddy (www.ysrportal.com).

Will it benefit the parties in election?

Of course, all the political parties want to reach the targeted audience with their websites but multiple websites may not always serve the purpose.

Balan points out that BJP with L K Advani's site, is trying to project a larger-than-life image of its Prime Minister candidate.

“From the perspective of reach, indeed multiple websites do segment the market at different levels, and also can be separately linked to other channels of communication,” he explains.

About Congress, Balan reckons that the party discourages personal websites of its leaders to keep the party's leadership intact.

However, the party's young brigades, like Sachin Pilot, Milind Deora and Jyotiraditya Scindia, have created online platforms with personal websites - like www.sachinpilot.com, www.milinddeora.com, www.jyotiraditya.com to connect to their electorate.

Still, Internet being a relatively new platform for campaigning, it may take a few more terms, before they can further use the platform's power for engaging audience, feels Misra.

What do you think? Can Internet campaign make a decisive difference among the electorate, especially the rural mass who are more concerned about bijli, sadak aur pani?