Don’t Vote. Select….Mumbaivotes.com… Be Informed

Mumbai is gearing up for the forthcoming 2009 elections with each political party announcing their candidates for the respective seats amidst intense political confusions and fighting, so where does the average voter stand whose precious vote is the most important factor in electing the representative.

Is he well informed???

Does he know about the person he is going to vote for???

Historically voters have been voting for the parties they follow but this is changing now as voters are becoming responsible enough to choose the perfect person to represent them.

Mumbaivotes.com a non-profit, independent info-bank comes as immense help for the average voter to make the choice simpler.

Mumbaivotes.com is currently tracking 927 MPs, MLAs and Corporators who are already representing or aspiring to represent their respective areas. It does a phenomenal job in tracking news articles related to them since 1^st January 2004 from all major dailies in multiple languages, video interviews etc to project a real image for an aspirant.

Now Mumbaikars have a means to track their representative’s performance through different parameters such as Attendance Analysis, Committee Membership Analysis, Fund Spending Analysis, Criminal Record Analysis, Election Manifesto, etc. This is an excellent way to track what your elected person have promised before elections and what they have achieved so far.

The website is as easy to use as it can get with all the information categorized neatly with an option to use Mumbai map to get to your constituency quickly. The site gives detailed information about each and every candidate or the currently elected person in great depth right from the contact details to the election manifestos, various performance analytics, various records such as criminal records, legislative records, articles and much more that will help voters to identify the deserving and the most appropriate candidate for their constituency. The portal also gives voters a chance to be informed about their representative’s promises and performance through a sign up option.

So visit Mumbaivotes.com and Be Informed. Don’t Vote. Select.

Indian Politics in the Web

From the Title you might be thinking that I am talking about the Indian Politicians who are always looking for a chance to spin a web around their opponents and tracking each others every move to make a Political benefit out of it.

Let me make one thing very clear, I am not talking about that Web. I am talking about the World Wide Web or the Internet.

“Indian Politics” and “WWW” don’t you think the combination is little weird. India has so many illiterate politicians and those are literate enough don’t seem to be Tech Savvy. Upto now political parties never had substantial online presence.

But all of this is changing… And this might be inspired by Mr. Barack Obama who ran the successful campaign for recently held Presidential Elections using Technology as a backbone for campaigning.

Indian Political Parties have recognized the power of Internet and its growing reach in India. And some of them are already using it to reach masses. Take for instance the case Mr. L. K. Advani who is running a CPC (Cost Per Click) campaign on Google and its Content Network sites. CPC Campaign model charges the advertiser when a user clicks on the ads that are hosted on the search result pages and on websites that host Google Ads.

Have u lately searched for anything related to Indian politicians or political parties on Google??? If you have done that you might have noticed that besides standard organic results it shows Sponsored Listing where these ads are shown. It takes a substantial amount time and effort to come on Top of the organic results where Google charges nothing for the traffic it generates to site. But if you have money to spend Sponsored Listings are easier way to generate traffic from the Worlds Leading Search Engine.

Other politicians and parties like Dr. Kirit Somaiya, Maharashtra Navnirman Sena, Congress and many other parties have their respective website in place but none of them are using CPC Campaigns as of now. So why is BJP spending these extra bucks???

Well unlike traditional methods of mass communication like TV ads, SMS or Pamplate distribution for communicating Party’s Electoral Agenda, Google’s search advertising gives a targeted audience. When using traditional method you don’t really know whether the recipients are interested in your content or not but in CPC case the user is already searching for information related to the content you have and thereby giving better chances of effective distribution of information. CPC is also cost effective as the ads are triggered only when related keyword is searched and you got to pay Google only when someone clicks on those ads.

Indian Political Parties are exploring new ways to reach their voters and promote their Agenda. Use of this kind of promotion for Political purpose is a new territory for India and let’s see how BJP fares it.