E Campaigning @ Lok Sabha Polls 2009

If some US politician would have made a Face book profile for election campaign nobody would have given it a damn. Or let’s say if some EU politician would have given banner ads on internet then also nobody would have given it a damn.

Now take this…

Some Indian politicians (Parties) have hired a team of internet marketing evangelists and bloggers and to campaigning for upcoming LS elections. Guys few of them even don’t know what Internet is and how to use it. Call it an e-blitz or “Obama Effect” but it is definitely capturing the balls of lots of people.

Parties like BJP are particularly very active on internet communities these days. One can see Mr. Advani everywhere starting from Blogs, websites, YouTube, Orkut. You name it and he will be there. In fact BJP has reserved 10% of the total budget for e-campaigning which is 9% higher than the previous e-campaigning budget. I came across these interesting urls

Advani's Blog has 6586 members, 2940 topics, and 9354 posts and has blogs in Hindi also!!!

Advani @ Campus First of its kind of initiative to mobilize College goers!!!

BJP is relying on e campaigning more than congress. This can be attributed to the fact that Congress has Rahul Gandhi to charm the younger generation so ball is in BJP’s court to make the cut.

Let’s look from the marketing angle to find out why all this makes sense:

You might have read this umpteen times that we are a young country with 500 million plus youngsters but now even political parties seems to understand this well. They have got their Segmentation, Targeting, Positioning on the dot. This e campaign is precisely targeting this young generation who seem to live their life in their inboxes.

E campaigns are 360 degree campaigns where perspective voters can freely e interact with the candidates. This provides an opportunity to the political parties to tilt the inclination of voter in their favor.

Now let’s look at the other side of the coin:

India has around 40 million direct internet users from all the age groups. One can add another 60 million who access internet from cyber cafes or from their college labs. 100 million is definitely a big number and can make that difference. But having said that one must realize that the attitude of, this 100 million and growing tribe is indifferent towards politics. Lots of them care a damn about what BJP or Congress can do to them. They are busy writing their destiny with their own hands. Though the campaigns like Jaago Re have been launched to address this very issue but their effectiveness is questionable.

Also with heavily skewed population distribution in favor of small towns and villages, reach of this e campaign is very limited.

Hence this e blitz may not translate into votes at all.

“Much can be said on either side”.

Let’s enjoy the ambiguity till May 2009 and then during post mortem I will present one more perspective on effectiveness of the e campaigns in politics in a truly political manner ;)