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Bangalore-based civil society group Janaagraha, which had earlier tied up with Tata Tea to launch the Jaago Re (wake up) campaign during the 2009 Indian Lok Sabha elections, has launched its citizen action community iJanaagraha today.

In its finished avatar, the iJanaagraha online platform will have strong location, community and activation layers and connect citizens with activists and politicians around civic issues at the polling booth level.

In the first phase, the iJanaagraha platform asks citizens to stay awake (Jaagte Raho) and register online to vote and also volunteer to become an Area Voter Mitra. Area Voter Mitra will run get-out-the-vote drives in their neighbourhoods, with support from Janaagraha and the Election Commission of India. The activities in the first phase will be focused on the long overdue Bangalore local elections (see iJanaagraha Blog).

On his own blog, my friend and co-conspirator Jasmine Shah shares his experiences in running the very successful Jaago Re campaign and looks ahead to Jaagte Raho.  Read More

I was quoted today in a really well-researched article on the low voter turnout in the 2009 Indian elections in Indian daily Mail Today (PDF).

The article seeks to answer the question I have been grappling with for the last 2-3 days: why have voter registration campaigns not increased voter turnout in the 2009 Indian Lok Sabha elections?

Here is the full text of the article –

Pappu shows the middle finger to a boring vote

Even after a publicity overdrive urging Middle India to exercise its vote, it has shown its disdain for our politicians

By Archana

Half of urban India has been caught napping in the middle of the biggest election process in the world taking place in its own courtyard. Three out of five phases of the general election 2009 are over and the Great Indian Middle Class — the driver of change that has powered the country’s recent economic successes — has shown how clearly uninterested it is in electing its own leaders. It’s shocking, especially because the run-up to the elections had seen unprecedented campaigning by NGOs, film stars (many of whom did not keep their promise to be at the polling station on the appointed day), citizen-activists and even a slew of companies, from Tata to McDonald’s, urging people to cast their ballot.  Read More

Photo courtesy Chhavi Sachdev

In the last two days, three different journalists have asked me why the voter turnout in Mumbai has decreased to 43% in spite of voter registration initiatives like Jaago Re and transparency initiatives like Vote Report India.

I have been shocked by the low voter turnout myself and will be reflecting on it over several posts. Here’s my first attempt to answer that question, partly through the Vote Report India lens.

We have had 170 odd reports so far on Vote Report India whereas I was expecting close to a thousand reports by now.

Also, most of the reports are web reports, which is surprising given that we had a SMS short code and users could report incidents by sending a SMS starting with VoteReport to 5676785.

In terms of the content of the reports, most reports reference a news report. Election Commission Interventions is the most popular category, followed by Voter Bribing, Violence and Inflammatory Speech. The categories with first-hand experience — Forged Vote, Voting Machine Problems, Voter Name Missing and What Went Well — have had few reports.  Read More

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

The story also quotes me extensively on why the 2009 Indian Lok Sabha elections are turning out to be India’s first digital elections.

In my series on the 2009 Indian elections, I have been writing about election-related internet and mobile initiatives from political parties, civil society organizations, media houses and corporates and tracking the reactions they have generated online.

Here is the full text of the story –

Campaigning virtually
Click and read
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.  Read More

The world’s biggest election is underway in India and, as India’s 714 million voters cast their ballots in the month-long elections, they are witness to a range of digital initiatives from political parties, civil society organizations, media houses and even corporates. It’s not surprising, then, that the Indian internet community is abuzz with discussions related to various aspects of the elections.

It’s not only a big election in terms of numbers, it’s a big election for India in terms of timing. Last November, the terrorist attack in Mumbai shook up India’s politically apathetic youngsters and brought them out into the streets. Since then, a series of digital civil society initiatives have sought to channel this newfound sense of civic engagement in the Indian youth into meaningful participation in the political process.

In the run up to the elections, online conversations in India have been charged with this civic consciousness. Transparency campaigns like No Criminals in Politics and Vote Report India and voter registration campaigns like Tata Tea’s Jaago Re have caught the imagination of urban India’s web-savvy youngsters, with their effective use of social media platforms like Facebook and YouTube.  Read More

The world’s largest democracy, India, goes to election starting April 16, 2009. The month long general elections to the 15th Lok Sabha will be held in five phases on April 16, April 22/ 23, April 30, May 7 and May 13, and the results will be announced on May 16.

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 organizations, media houses and even corporates. As a result, some observers are calling it India’s first digital elections.

Leading from the front is 82 year old Lal Krishna Advani, the prime ministerial candidate of the right wing Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party, who has embarked on a Obama style new media campaign. Part of the campaign are a blog, a blogger outreach program, one of the most aggressive online ad campaigns ever seen in India, and an aggressive SMS campaign that will reach 250 million of India’s 400 million mobile subscribers. Rajesh Jain’s Netcore Solutions, which is running the SMS campaign for BJP, has bought an inventory of 1 billion SMSes for the campaign. Rajesh is also a part of the Friends of BJP group, which is running a social network and an opt-in MyToday-based SMS channel to support BJP’s campaign (Indian Express).  Read More

In my previous posts for the Global Voices special coverage on the 2009 Indian general elections, I have analyzed how Indian politicians and political parties are using internet and mobile tools for election campaigning and civil society groups in India are using digital tools to run voter registration and transparency campaigns.

As interesting as these initiatives are, the three most effective election campaigns in the 2009 Indian general elections are run by corporate brands: Jaago Re by Tata Tea, My Idea from Idea Cellular and Lead India/ Bleed India by The Times of India (Live Mint/ Thaindian/ Exchange4Media/ Hindustan Times).

In my earlier avatar as the custodian of a large brand in India, I was convinced that online campaigns in India could stand on their own, without support from ad spends in mainstream media. The tactics employed by these three successful campaigns have made me realize that online brand campaigns in India will continue to be driven by heavy spending in mainstream media.  Read More