A few South Bangalore candidates are betting on an Obama strategy for their campaigns, and looking hard at the internet, reports Joshua Muyiwa.
The big lesson influencing planners in the many offices rolling out strategies in the Bangalore South fray these elections, it appears, came from the landmark campaign of US President Barack Obama. There’s no doubt that Obama wisely judged the immense prospect of taking his empowered “Yes We Can” campaign online, but there’s little chance that he realised his decisions would dictate proceedings as far removed from Washington DC as this constituency, where Krishna Byre Gowda (Congress), and independent contestant GR Gopinath, among others are campaigning. As it turns out, the teams behind Gowda’s and Gopinath’s campaigns are trying to replicate exactly the kind of success that Obama’s camp achieved.
Sharan Grandigae, co-founder of Redd, a software development agency in Bangalore, always recognised the potential of politics going online. Sometime in March, when he walked into the Congress campaign offices, Grandigae was intent on pitching his idea of revamping Gowda’s website; that, he believed, would give the candidate’s campaign a certain edge, particularly in terms of reaching out to younger voters. “The solution to reaching out to the 65 per cent of voters under the age of 25 was to focus the campaigning on spaces they inhabit,” explained Grandigae. “We are a young country with 78 per cent of voters under the age of 35, and the majority of us are on Facebook, Twitter [the instant update online service] and [in the] blog-o-sphere. That is the group we’re targeting.”
Girish Rao, Gopinath’s campaign manager, agreed with Grandigae. “We’re addressing a tech-savvy middle class,” he said, “and with first-time voters in Bangalore South numbering 21 lakh, it is physically impossible to reach out to each one of them. The internet is a great tool for such communication.”
There seems to be a sudden sense of awareness about the power of online campaigns, added Charan; he’s the other Grandigae, Sharan’s twin brother, and co-founder of Redd. “Online media seems to be the only logical space to canvas, because it’s now deemed illegal to put up hoardings and banners in the city, and if one looks at the track record of something like the Pink Chaddi Campaign, you see the middle class reacting and using the internet as a medium to voice their concerns,” he explained. Sharan added, “This has become a space for people to interact, with the [Gowda] website getting more than a 1,000 hits a day, and overnight, we have moved from 448 to 613 members on our Facebook page [as of Sunday, April 5].” Both the blog and the Facebook page have begun to get rapidly populated with views on civic amenities, moral policing and reasons to vote for Gowda, added the Grandigae brothers.
Rao admitted that Obama’s online campaign was indeed a big influence. Unlike Obama, however, they only have about three weeks – not up to two years – to put together their online packages. “There is a shortage of time, so our website has gone through radical changes from when it began. We are also using Twitter, so people can keep a track of their candidate.” The response was unprecedented, he added, for instance, nearly one-third of their 400-strong volunteer team enrolled only after they’d read the website or responded to e-mails and text messages.”
But will this presence result in votes? Rao admitted that the idea behind the online campaigns is, as yet, focussed on getting people to exercise their rights. “Our idea is to say, ‘come out and vote’. If you’re in Bangalore South, vote for Gopinath, but only if you’re convinced that we’re the change you’re looking for.”
Switch guard
As with print media, there are positives and negatives to online campaigns, offered a 45-year-old journalist who’s been covering politics for the last 20 years for a national daily, and who needs to go unnamed because, ironically, he is not authorised to speak to the press. “The positive seems to be that these web-based fora have made electoral reforms possible in a way that may not have been possible a few years ago. Also, if these fora are able to make urban voters get out and vote, then it will certainly translate into a catalyst of change.” In the May 2008 elections, said the veteran scribe, up to 41 per cent of urban voters were recorded to have gone out and cast their votes. “And that is abysmal… if more people do go out and vote, then it’s a positive.”
The negative aspect, he added, seems to be about a digital divide that hasn’t been taken into consideration, “even in a city like Bangalore”. “The per capita internet penetration is not as large as it is imagined to be. Also, most people aren’t aware of these [statistics], so there are promised meet-the-politician sessions, but people haven’t read the fact sheets, and so don’t attend, and therefore there is no accountability, which is a problem.”
Another journalist from a national news magazine, who’s been covering politics for the past 12 years, and also goes unnamed, chose to quote HD Deve Gowda: “all techies are Brahmins”. “There seems to be an element of truth in this,” said the journo, “but I’d like to add [the clause] ‘upper class’ [to that statement]. “Bangalore, as a tech-savvy urban space, was a dream started in SM Krishna’s time, but this is largely an assumption, not reality, because computer penetration in the city is limited, and not as wide-spread as imagined,” he added. “Online campaign is a good idea, because it may get a few urbanites to vote, but only a few.”
There are also stereotyping problems that arise with online campaigning, the journalist pointed out. “Your internet-savvy neta is English-speaking, meritorious and urban, and your criminal neta looks like a villain in a Telugu or Tamil movie, a caricature, and that’s a serious problem that is not being addressed.” Joshua Muyiwa
Source : Time Out Bengaluru ISSUE 1 Friday, July 23, 2010
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