During the 2008 US Presidential campaign, the Democratic candidate and eventual winner Barack Obama notably harnessed the power of the Internet to create a mind-boggling organisation and network of grassroots supporters and small-scale donations. And for General Election 2009, some political parties seem to have realised the potential of the Internet.
The most prominent is, of course, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which has bought advertising all over the Internet to ensure that virtually every Indian surfing the Internet will see an advertisement for the party’s prime ministerial candidate L.K. Advani. “Actually, you will be surprised how cheaply we bought those ads,” jokes Prodyut Bora, Convener, BJP Digital Cell.
Alongside the party website (www.bjp.org) which began in 1998, Bora and his team of six volunteers have also created a massive site for Advani (www.lkadvani. in). “The site has been extremely successful in terms of getting our message across,” he says. In fact, alongside Advani, other leaders of the BJP, such as Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi, have also harnessed the web and supporters have also created an unofficial account on micro-blogging service Twitter. And fan support is what most of the other political parties survive on.
While Indian National Congress (INC) has an official website (www.congress.org.in) with all the vital information on it, its leaders are nowhere to be seen on the web. However, some plucky entrepreneurs— or some people trying to make a buck off web advertising— have created websites for them. Some of the younger leaders are on the Facebook, though.
The Communist parties, too, have taken to the Internet, though their sense of web design and layout does leave a bit to be desired. Both the Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M) and the Communist Party of India (CPI) have websites that are updated regularly. Party officials concede that the growing “youth factor” in Indian elections (surprising, since the two prime ministerial candidates have a combined age of over 155) persuaded them to go online.
The Uttar Pradesh adversaries, the Samajwadi Party (SP) and the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP), have also invested in an online presence. In fact, the BSP site is a treasure trove of information about Mayawati and has a candidate list, but has a cluttered design. SP has recently added a blog to its website, but this is an unsigned blog, which is unfortunate, as an Amar Singh blog might have been very popular.
Quite a few smaller parties also have a website. Some, like that of Raj Thackeray’s Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS), are well-made, while others such as Chandrababu Naidu’s Telugu Desam Party (TDP) are full of information (in Telugu). But websites of others like the Nationalist Congress Party (www.ncp.org) have not been updated in years. This is particularly surprising since the NCP has the youngest Member of Parliament (MP) in the outgoing 13th Lok Sabha—27-year-old Agatha Kongkal Sangma. Maybe youth isn’t everything.
Other Parties
- DMK
http://www.dmk.in: This Tamil website is informative but seems to have been designed even before the Web 1.0 era, judging by its layout and animated graphics.
- TDP
http://www.telugudesam. org/: Chandrababu Naidu positioned himself as the king of Information Technology and his website, while only in Telugu, is both informative and easy to surf. But the amount of yellow does hurt the eyes.
- RJD
http://www.rashtriyajanatadal. com/: This is an unofficial website, but its rival Janata Dal (United) doesn’t even have that.
- Shiv Sena
http://www.shivsena. org/: Decent website, but the Shiv Sena should add more browser support—the site breaks when used with Firefox.
- Maharashtra Navnirman Sena
http://www.manase.org/: Raj Thackeray is trying to use the Internet either to rehabilitate his image or spread more of his extremist regional message— depends on your viewpoint. In terms of design and layout, the MNS website scores better than the Shiv Sena’s.
- Trinamool Congress
http://www.trinamoolcongress. com/: Mamata Banerjee’s message of protest against the Communists has made it online—pity about the “Cangress” bit on the header and the fact that it has not been updated recently.
- Communist Party of India
http://www.cpindia.org/: The CPI does not have as dedicated an Internet team as their bigger brothers CPI(M), but at least they are online and their site is updated regularly.
- Praja Rajyam
http://www.praja-rajyam.com and http://www.chiruprajarajyamparty. com/: To be fair to Andhra star Chiranjeevi, his idolating fans have taken the lead in establishing and setting up a website as the party itself does not have an official website.
- Lok Jan Shakti Party
http: //www.lokjanshaktiparty.com/: Well, they have an official website, but that is about it, as updates are few and far between.
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