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Political parties and their candidates are leaving no stone unturned for securing a win and are increasingly relying on technology to connect with their younger, tech-savvy electorate. Helping them in their mission are interactive voice-response (IVR), constituency management software, social media and 3D technologies to a name a few.
“The ongoing Lok Sabha elections could very well mark a paradigm shift in ‘political communications’ in India. The last several months have seen heightened levels of political awareness and discussions across major social media platforms. Adding to this is the fact that there are nearly 90,000 first-time voters in each constituency,” says Aakash Srivastava, founder-director of full-service interactive communications agency Prabhavya, which operates out of New Delhi and Ahmedabad.
At the national level, Facebook has 86 million users above the age of 18. And, 36 million of these users are between the ages of 18 and 22 — the group that will vote for the first time.
Srivastava says though the campaign execution leaves a lot to be desired from a practitioner’s point of view, it is nevertheless a interesting scenario from the social media perspective. “Given the amount of buzz about politics and elections on social media, it seems very likely that this targeted communication and engagement will translate into votes,” he adds.
Prabhavya, which is working with multiple candidates across party lines, benchmarks social media usage with Facebook because it is the largest social media platform around.
According to Palwai Raghavendra Reddy, director of Hyderabad-based political process outsourcing company Sipper Global Informatics, technology enables to reach out to most percentage of voters effectively than compared with traditional methods of processions, public meetings or door-to-door campaigns. In addition to the cost advantage, he says, the wide reach of mobile phones today attracts political parties and candidates towards the IVR format.
Sipper Global, which specialises in creating a space for personalised communication on IVR (interactive-voice response) and outbound calling platforms between political parties or leaders and their target groups, has empowered one politician from Chhattisgarh who contested the state Assembly polls in November 2013.
It enabled him to reach out to almost every voter from his constituency who possessed a mobile phone. In addition to outbound calling, it activated a toll-free number where people could call and know what work the leader has done over the last five years, what his agenda is for the next five years, and also take suggestions and complaints.
“We have worked for various politicians across Chhattisgarh, Odisha, Uttar Pradesh, Telangana and Andhra Pradesh, and have thus far delivered over 20 million outbound calls, and received more than 1.8 million inbound calls on IVR lines that we enabled for various politicians,” Reddy says. The company is working with five candidates across fours states and is targeting another five from the same regions. It is reaching out to 3.4 million voters and intends to increase it to at least six million.
However, Srivastava says the ability to influence or impact voters depends on the engagement strategy the candidates employ. Also, Facebook in India is still a largely urban phenomenon so a big chunk of this addressable audience will lie in the metro/mega city clusters.
“The tools and tactics used for a campaign differ based on the digital entrenchment in a particular constituency. While Facebook being the largest social network usually finds a place in each campaign, other social media platforms like Twitter, Pinterest, Quora, Youtube come into play depending on whether they can bring in the required engagement and traction,” he adds.
Univvista Soft Tech, also from Hyderabad, has developed Vote Sahakar, a web-enabled constituency and campaign management software that provides database of all the voters in Andhra Pradesh and Telangana. Data can be searched using voter’s name, age, sex, address, ward, booth and constituency with this software.
“The software has been developed to facilitate better election management and help in organising campaigning,” says Vantipalli Bharathi, director of Univvista.
Vote Sahakar enables to expand database including caste, religion and phone numbers, besides including prior government scheme beneficiaries. It also helps identify homes containing large families and apartments where a large number of voters reside, besides providing the ability to slice the voters according to acquaintances, relationships and locations for effective use. It also helps in easier generation and distribution of poll slips.
“Easy-to-use and affordability (Rs 1.50 per voter) are the factors making political parties incline towards software like Vote Sahakar. We are targeting to sell the product across all the Lok Sabha and Assembly constituencies in both the states,” she adds.
Yet another tool the politicians are actively looking at is the 3D hologram technology, popularised by BJP’s prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi during the 2012 Assembly elections in Gujarat. 3D hologram enables a politician to speak at a studio, the signal of which could be received at multiple locations, giving voters a feeling that their leader is standing in front of them in flesh and blood.
Telugu Desam Party supremo Nara Chandrababu Naidu and Telangana Rashtra Samithi president K Chandrasekhara Rao are set to use this technology during their campaigns, which are expected to kick off in a couple of days.
