The Curious Case of Indian Elections
Elections in India go hi-tech. Did you think I was referring to on-line Party manifestos or websites of candidates? That’s a thing of the past; the blessing of technology has come to empower the common Indian voter.
Google has partnered with Hindustan Times and several NGOs provide a comprehensive on-line info center for the Indian voter. From issues of one’s voter registration, location of polling booths to the candidate’s political records and the constituency’s socio-economic development figures, the site provides it all. The site, available in Hindi and English will cater to 700 million voters across the country. And Google is not the only one; even Yahoo has launched a less refined version of the Google site.
The development is a momentous one given the fact that India’s internet population has grown 700% since 2000. Despite this impressive figure internet is still not accessed by a huge majority of India – only 3.5% of the population is on-line. Though the costs of the internet connection are affordable, non-availability of broadband services or poor reception even in many areas of the urban centers could limit the outreach of this new experiment.
Given these facts do you think the Google powered election center will work in India?
[Photo Courtesy: flicker user Marco Braun]
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Next big market is India and China, I am amazed by the sheer size of eventual subscribers. I guess most populous countries and now going to be biggest markets.
Google and Yahoo are smart in realizing that this is market of future, the spending on this is like peanuts for them and 10 - 20 years down the line when Active net users in India reach 300 million, this may turn out to be a gold mine.
I seriously think that this initiative will go a long way in removing the ripples of largest democracy. We have so many issues with voter registration, dimple chads, robo calls and what else in here I am pretty sure this will be much higher in India.