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I was quoted today in Indian daily Mail Today in a story on the increasing popularity of Twitter in India.

The story talks about how an engaged Twitter community has emerged in India since I organized India’s first tweetup two years back. A case in point in the tweetup with writer, UN diplomat, and member of parliament Shashi Tharoor organized by Twilight Fairy.

The article also chronicles the use of Twitter by Indian celebrities like Shashi Tharoor, Rahul Gandhi, Gul Panang and Mallika Sherawat.

Here’s the ful text of the story –

If you don’t tweet you haven’t arrived

By Neha Tara Mehta in New Delhi

Not only the geeks but glitterati too are hooked to the micro- blogging networking site

IT TOOK just 140 characters to change the way our celebrities talk to us. You no longer need Page 3 to know who Mallika Sherawat is flirting with, when Shashi Tharoor gets a haircut, and the kind of music that helps Rahul Gandhi unwind.

Introduction: India Votes for No Change in the 2009 Lok Sabha Elections

Photo courtesy Al Jazeera under a Creative Commons License

The results for the month long Indian Lok Sabha elections are out and India has voted back the incumbent Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) into power with a decisive verdict, surprising many observers.

As I write this post, the results for 480 out of all the 543 seats have been declared. The Congress is leading in more than 200 has won 206 seats and UPA is less than 20 11 seats away from reaching the magic figure of 273.

The verdict is a reminder of the Indian electorate’s love affair with the Nehru-Gandhi family and a coming of age of sorts for Rahul Gandhi, the young scion of the family. A jubilant Sonia Gandhi reiterated that Manmohan Singh will be Congress Party’s choice for the prime minister. Manmohan Singh will be the first Prime Minister after Jawaharlal Nehru to return to power after a full five-year term.

I’m starting off the Global Voices special coverage on the 2009 Indian general elections by analyzing how internet and mobile technologies are transforming election campaigning in India.

Politics in India is essentially local and India’s voters elect their representatives based on small local and regional issues, instead of the big national issues. As a result, election rallies and door-to-door canvassing, supplemented by local hoardings and print ads in the vernacular languages have traditionally been at the core of election campaigning in India.

In 2004, the incumbent BJP broke away from this pattern with its aggressive nation-wide ‘India Shining’ campaign. It recruited advertising and PR agencies to manage its campaign, focused on the urban first time voter, advertised heavily on print and television, and allocated 5% of its campaign budget to an e-campaign, for revamping its campaign website, pushing out text messages, pre-recorded voice clips and emails to its database of 20 million email users and 20 million phone users, and offering campaign-related mobile ringtones for download (BBC/ BBC/ Rediff/ Hindu). The ‘India Shining’ campaign didn’t work eventually, and Sonia Gandhi led Congress to a surprise victory, once again reaffirming the almost magical appeal of the Nehru-Gandhi family amongst India’s voters. Many observers even attributed BJP’s loss to its “elitist” ‘India Shining’ campaign (Live Mint).

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, April 23, April 30, May 7 and May 13, and the results will be announced on May 16.

This is an important election for India, in the context of a series of terrorist attacks last year that shook up the country, and a worldwide financial crisis that threatens to derail its strong economic growth. However, even as analysts debate about the big issues that will shape the upcoming elections, they will do well to remember that India’s 714 million voters elect their 543 representatives based on small local and regional issues, instead of the big national issues.

This local nature of India’s national elections is at the core of India’s coalition politics. In the last decade, both Indian National Congress (Congress) and Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP) have had to form coalitions consisting of several small regional parties. The BJP led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) was in power from 1999 to 2004 under BJP leader Atal Bihari Vajpayee. The Congress led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) has been in power since 2004 under Congress party’s Manmohan Singh. Parties opposed to both the Congress and the BJP are also talking about forming a Third Front, but previous experience has shown that such coalitions tend to be fragile.

The UK foreign secretary David Miliband maintains a rather interetsing official blog.

Chris Morris from BBC has an interesting account of David Miliband’s recent trip to Amethi with Congress general secretary (and heir to the Nehru-Gandhi “dynasty”) Rahul Gandhi –

Excitement builds during a stop at a mobile phone shop in a nearby town. The owner says 80% of local people have a mobile phone.

“He’s exaggerating,” Rahul Gandhi admits, “but the numbers are growing fast.”

This shop alone sells between five and 10 phones a day.

The foreign secretary wants to send an e-mail, to write on his blog. “It’ll cost you seven rupees (£0.1),” Mr Gandhi says, and the money is secured.

But sadly the line is down… the blog will have to wait. The mobile revolution is having a huge effect in rural India, but connectivity takes time.

On his own blog, David Miliband talks about the mobile revolution in India –

We stopped at an internet café in the middle of nowhere – I wanted to do a blog but the dial-up was not fast enough. But the mobile phone revolution is reaching here – the shop was selling 5 – 10 mobile phones a day, and although there are 850 million people on less than $2 a day, 8.5 million new subscriptions per month is eating in to the backlog.