Indian elections���09 saw three levels of technological innovations. Use of social media by parties has increased. EC introduced mobile in Bangalore for election operations. Corporate houses launched awareness campaigns and polls are digitalised.

THREE LEVELS of technological innovation are in play in the 2009 Indian elections. The first example of increased technology use is the experimentation with social media by political parties and their candidates at the federal and state levels, some of whom have presences on Facebook and Orkut, fairly active blogs, and Twitter feeds.

 
Gaurav Mishra, a Yahoo! Fellow at Georgetown, who researches the use of social media in BRIC countries, describes their experimentation in detail on Global Voices. The BJP, one of the contending parties, has launched an online ad campaign and also plans to reach out to mobile users through text messaging.
 

The second area of innovative technology use is in election operations. The Election Commission in Bangalore provided mobile handsets to sector officers across the state of Karnataka. The EC will use these handsets to communicate with officers and mobilise them quickly to rush to sensitive polling stations where electoral malpractices or voting conduct violations occur.
 
The EC also built a web reporting system that allows the upload of media clippings and enables officers to easily report voting code violations. India will use one million electronic voting machines, making this one of the largest digital elections in the world.
 
Inspired by Obama’s tech-savvy, grassroots election campaign, young urban Indians with access to the Internet are designing and participating in voter registration, transparency, and political advocacy campaigns, constituting the third tier of innovative technology use in this election. Endorsed by celebrities and popularized through TV ads, these campaigns include discussion forums, content on the candidates and issues, and an active social media presence. Citywide initiatives such as those for Mumbai and Bangalore focus on informing citizens about local MP candidates.
 
Even Google has jumped on the election bandwagon with the Google India Elections centre developed in partnership with Hindustan Times. Available in English and Hindi, the site allows users to locate their constituencies and polling stations, access election news and candidate quotes, and become better informed of the issues by making available area-specific development data such as urbanization, crime rate, literacy rate, and poverty, among other indicators.
 
The three largest citizen mobilisation campaigns are those backed by corporate houses: Jago Re supported by Tata Tea, My Idea sponsored by Idea Cellular, and Lead India, backed by The Times of India, India’s largest English language daily. My Idea is an online space for citizens to submit and discuss their ideas to change India. Lead India, which began as a televised talent hunt for India’s next generation of leaders, positions itself as the voice of young India and features active discussion forums on various hot topics. Jaago Re, started by civic-minded youth in their twenties, is most directly tied to the election with its online voter registration facility and FAQs, an issues blog, and election news.