The campaigning for the first round of elections in Karnataka have come to an end. The first round of polling will be happening tomorrow and I know lot of people would be lamenting the fact that it happens to be a Saturday. How nice it would had been if it was a Friday, it could had been a long weekend.
Anyway before I digress from the topic of my post I was wondering when will Indian politicians start using web for reaching out to voters. I googled around to check for little more on that, sadly Indian politicians seem to be absent. That makes me think why they are missing . One of the reasons can be is most of the internet users belong to a class which doesn’t vote. So why waste efforts behind it. That leaves me wondering if the politicians are to blame or it is the class which doesn’t care much about voting.And also do we have politicians who are internet savvy ? With election commision breathing down the necks of the politicians and keeping a hawk eye on the money spent on canvassing , I guess they would be trying to conserve their cash and use it well. Rather print some pamphlets then spend money on putting up a website.Someone tell them about wordpress and also that it comes for free.
I happened to check Barack Obama’s website. Pretty neat stuff and its the first result you get when you google his name. There seems to be a serious effort behind it. Its a neatly designed site and carries all details regarding his campaign. Also check him out on facebook . Hillary Clinton is also there on the web. Its a good way of reaching out to the voters.
Hopefully in future we may see stalwarts of Indian politics using internet to reach out to people. If nothing but then at least prime ministerial candidates like LK Advani on the net. However its nice to see people like Naveen Jindal , Jyotiraditya Scindia already there.I found a www.rahulgandhi.net but I am not sure it is the official site.
By the way just got an sms from the Chief election commisioner’s office . The sms has the telephone numbers for voter helpline. Thank god there is someone who is using mobile and internet to a good use. Hopefully in future when our politicians start using facebook, linkedin and orkut to reach out the voters. And when we see them on web, I hope to see more of the person rather then the party there. Let them talk about themselves and what they intend to do rather then about the parties they belong to .
Closing off, the best site I found of Indian politicians is of Narendra Modi , check it out
Posted by asutosh 