Dawn of social media in Indian politics
The wall street journal blog which has a section devoted to India has an interesting analysis of how social media is being used by the political parties across India in the buildup to the regional state elections.
It is very interesting to note that websites, email, social media including youtube has become a tool to propagate agendas by political parties and interact with the voters directly. While the blog rightly observes that the use of social media is minimal as compared to the last US elections which Barak Obama won -It is widely believed that Barrak Obama won because of the optimal use of digital media to reach out the voters. The good news is that we are getting there as Indians. I’m very surprised that the national parties like Congress and the BJP do not have mobile apps considering the penetration of mobile phones specially in the states that are going to elections these days.
It is heartening to see that BJP has launched its IPTV Channel which is used to connect to them masses. See the IPTV launch announcement below
One of the comforting and exciting feeling is that I’m part of era which is seeing the emerging and adoption of new technologies. While the implementation of the new technologies might be different from the developed countries it is exciting to see how the technologies are adapted to suit the Indian conditions.
