When the legendary TED conference came down to India, Indian bloggers were understandably excited.

In the run up to TEDIndia, a few Indian bloggers got together to interview TEDIndia fellows and Geetha Krishnan put together a compilation of the TEDIndia fellow interviews.

During the conference, the TED blog fed the excitement by posting session-wise roundups (session 1, session 2, session 3, session 4, session 5, session 6, session 7, session 8, session 9) and reactions to the most popular talks (Hans Rosling, Devdutt Pattanaik, Tony Hsieh, Scott Cook, Pranav Mistry, Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev, Shukla Bose, Anil Gupta, Kavita Ramdas, Sunitha Krishnan, Sidi Goma, Ramachandra Budihal, Ananda Shankar Jayant, Kiran Sethi, Eve Ensler, His Holiness the Karmapa, Shashi Tharoor) and even did a roundup of reactions to the conference.

TED India participants at the venue. Image by Kiruba Shankar

Several bloggers wrote posts about how TED touched them in unexpected ways.

Rajiv Dingra was one of them –

In my last 3 years and more of blogging experience Ive attended over 50 events (atleast) and each of them have left me richer in knowledge or in insight. But none of them have ever moved me to tears or made me go in deep thought or made me proud to be Indian all in the matter of days. TEDIndia infact was more a reflection of what are the grave issues in India and the brilliance and the fallacy of India rather than being specific to Technology, Entertainment and Design.

Peter Elst summarized TEDIndia in ten quotes.

While the overall reaction to TEDIndia was overwhelmingly positive, several attendees were left a little underwhelmed.

TEDIndia fellow Amit Varma complained that TEDIndia catered to Western stereotypes of India –

There was much exotica, and much mysticism served up that says nothing at all about the country we are today. The average foreign attendee would have gone away with his stereotypes about India reinforced, not shattered. That’s an opportunity missed.

Awesome backdrop for a dance party. Image by Kiruba Shankar

Amit also shared an interesting sociological observation –

The pharmacy at the Infosys campus in Mysore does not sell condoms. I want you to think about that for a moment. This is a campus where thousands of young men and women stay and work together. The official Infosys position on this matter, thus, seems to be that either a) Infosys employees do not have sex or b) Infosys employees have sex, but it should not be safe sex. Isn’t this interesting?

Aditi Machado was surprised by TEDIndia's strong focus on India –

In retrospect the India-focus at TED was too strong. When TED is held in the UK or the US, does the conference become all about those countries and those countries’ contributions to the world? I don’t think so. The running theme at TEDIndia, beginning with the first talk by Hans Rosling, seemed to be: ‘India will become the next superpower. Oh, and China too. But we’re in India and India is a democracy and we hate Commies, so we like India better.’ I’m sure many Indians were flattered, and I’m as patriotic as the next person, but it was disturbing to see that almost every speaker, especially the non-Indians, felt obligated to give us a big pat on the back.

Manjeet Kripalani at Financial Express also complained about TEDIndia's uni-directional programming –

The title was promising: “TEDIndia: the Future Beckons”. On the Mysore campus, India’s future had already arrived. It did not reflect in the programming of TEDIndia. The idea of TED is unique. Brilliant new minds who expound their futuristic ideas in 18 minutes to a sophisticated celebrity audience, interspersed with entertainment, music and some socially responsible talk. This TED conference was more “Bono Saves the World” than either Technology or Entertainment or Design. No soft or hard power, but powerlessness.

TED India talks. Image by Kiruba Shankar

TED attendee Our Woman in Havana rounded off her series of posts about TEDIndia (day one, day two, day three, day four) by deciding that the real genius of TED lies in its ability to gather together people who are hugely talented and successful in a diverse range of fields –

Some of my best TED moments were little breaks when a randomly struck conversation brought nuggets of new thought –talking literature with A who worked in microfinance with the Acumen Fund and discovering our common heritage; discussing whether Urdu should be written in Hindi script in order to preserve the language in India with T; clashing head-on with J over Cuban politics at lunch; understanding from A why someone would want to put a boutique hotel in Ahmedabad; learning from B how designers can source organic materials; always always bumping into T and talking football, Punjabi and why lawyers are perceived as emptying rather than filling; dancing with a stranger; drinking coffee with an artist; discussing with C how to put Shashi Tharoor on the spot with a question about Indian state accountability over genocide. The genius in TED lay in those moments where nobody knew what would come next, and could then be blown away by what did come next. At times, those were the speakers, and often, those moments came in the all too brief meetings we had with people who already seem to have become friends.

For me, TEDIndia was about a rediscovery of the power of storytelling –

These stories reminded me that the most powerful stories we can tell about ourselves are, in fact, stories about other people. These stories reminded me that by telling stories about ideas that are bigger than us, we become bigger than ourselves. These stories reminded me that we are shaped by the stories we tell others, but even more so by the stories we tell ourselves.

TED India group photo - the crazy version. Image by Kiruba Shankar

The TEDIndia talks will soon be up on the TED website, so do look out for them.

Cross-posted at Gauravonomics, my blog on social media and social change.

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I had earlier written about the use of social technologies in the 2009 Iran presidential election campaign.

Now, Mir-Hossein Mousavi's supporters are disputing the overwhelming victory of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in the elections (Hamid Tehrani at Global Voices).

Various observers have called the protests ‘Facebook/ Twitter protests', claiming that social media tools have been critical in organizing these protests (Clay Shirky on TED Blog, Lev Glossman in Time, Mark Ambinder at The Atlantic). The #IranElection Twitter feed has indeed been hyperactive all week (Ben Parr in Mashable).

Social networking sites like Twitter, Facebook and Delicious have also been used to organize DDOS attacks against government and pro-Ahmedinejad websites, including Ahmadinejad.ir (Noah Shachtman at Wired). It seems that some US bloggers are also promoting these DDOS attacks (Nancy Scola at TechPresident) and a DC based political firm is actually participating in them, in a misguided (and illegal) attempt at digital activism (Evgeny Morozov at Foreign Policy).

Some Ahmadinejad supporters are also using blogs and Twitter to explain why they believe he legitimately won (Hamid Tehrani in Global Voices).

In an attempt to quell the protests, the Iran government has blocked several social networking websites like Twitter, Facebook and YouTube, apart from several international news websites (Richard Sambrook at BBC, Associated Press).

On the other side, the US State Department has reportedly “asked Twitter to refrain from going down for periodic scheduled maintenance at this critical time” (Elise Labott at CNN, Nancy Scola at TechPresident).

Twitter is being used in many ways in post-election Iran: for organizing protests, for sharing first hand reports from the ground, for focusing international attention on the protests and for changing the news agenda for international news organizations.

When the dust settles down on the Iran election crisis, we will see that Twitter was more useful as a media tool and not as an organizing tool. We will see that Twitter didn't really change much in Iran in terms of organizing the protests, but it did play an important role in engaging the international community in the protests and focusing media attention on the protests (see Evgeny Morozov at Foreign Policy, Daniel Terdiman at CNet and Marshall Kirkpatrick at RWW on #CNNFail).

In fact, there are less than 10,000 Twitter users in Iran (Sysomos via BusinessWeek) and less than 100 of them seem to be active. Given these small numbers, it's quite amazing that their tweets have generated such a multiplier effect via retweets etc. (The number of Twitter users in Iran might be artificially high as of today because of a misguided campaign that asked people to change their Twitter location to Tehran to make it difficult for the Iran government to target dissidents.)

However, the on-ground organizing in Iran is probably happening via mobile phones and offline networks, the same networks that were previously used to mobilize Mousavi's supporters to go out and vote for him.

Calling the Iran protests a ‘Twitter Revolution' is not only distracting but also dangerous because it reduces a legitimate broad-based grassroots movement to what's quickly becoming a cliche, after Moldova.

Mary Joyce at DigiActive.org uses my 4Cs social media framework to evaluate the campaign and says: “this campaign has achieved Content Creation and Collaboration on Collective Action, but will it be able to create a Community which will sustain long term action once the Iranian election is gone from the headlines?”

Evgeny Morozov shares my skepticism about “the claims that Twitter has been instrumental in organizing the protests” and thinks that it mostly played a role “in publicizing the violence or the already planned protests and rallies.”

Nancy Scola at TechPresident agrees that, “as we saw in Moldova, the idea of a “Twitter Revolution” isn't always borne out by the facts, at least to the extent that the uprising would have not taken place without the tool.”

Brand Stone and Noam Cohen at NYT agree with me that “labeling such seemingly spontaneous anti-government demonstrations a “Twitter Revolution” has already become something of a cliché.

Kara Swisher at AllThingsD is annoyed at the media hype for Twitter “because it is how the tools are used by people, more than the tools themselves, that should be the focus.”

Ethan Zuckerman is amazed at “the extent to which reporters from really good newspapers are all asking the same questions.”

Marc Ambinder at The Atlantic reminds the intelligence community that most reports on Twitter are noise, not signal intelligence.

Tom Watson at TechPresident reminds us that there are limits to what technology can do, “especially when men and women are marching in streets patrolled by the troops of an absolutist religious dictatorship, facing soldiers' guns in public and the noose behind the prison wall.”

Cross-posted at Gauravonomics, my blog on social media and social change.

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At each of the four levels of Content, Collaboration, Community and Collective Intelligence, social technologies can lead to both good and bad outcomes.

I have written before about Shiv Sena's militant approach towards Orkut communities critical of the party, its leader Bal Thakeray, or its Hindutva ideology. Caste-based communities on Orkut are another disturbing example of online communities mirroring the dysfunctions in Indian society.

For instance, there are more than 1000 communities for Brahmins on Orkut. There are 461 Brahmin communities listed under culture and community, 591 under religion and beliefs, 87 under activities and 117 under others.

One of the most popular Brahmin community, with 28, 726 members, randomly claims: “we r clever & hardworking. no one can fool us…” The Brahmans community with 41952 members and the Brahmins of India community with 30588 members are also very popular.

The other popular Brahmin communities are those for the various Brahmin sub-castes like Gawd Saraswat Brahmin (GSB) (12,189 members), Kokanastha Brahmin (4038 members), Deshashtha Brahmin (4083 members), Garhwali Brahmin (3067 members), Daivadnya Brahmin (2654 members) and Gaur Brahmin (2055 members). Another group, Brahmin Culture and Tradition is “dedicated to the purpose of uniting Brahmins to revive, preserve, protect and propagate the Brahmin culture to descendants without intimidation or dilution from anti-Brahminical forces.”

Interestingly, it seems that most of the threads under topics related to Brahmins have to do with defining the different types of Brahmins under various sub-castes.

There are also more than 1000 communities for Yadavs on Orkut, including gems like modern yadav girls and boys (5759 members).

Similarly, there are more than a 1000 Rajput communities on Orkut, including the Rajput the Royal Family community with 35,481 mebers, which asks people to join the group “if your soul justifies that you are Rajput both by soul and by nature.”

Orkut's Debut to Indian Diwali - 2006, Image by Brajeshwar from Flickr (cc licensed)

Dalits have about 200 mostly small communities on Orkut.

Perhaps, the low number of Dalit communities on Orkut says something about Indian society in general, and Orkut users in particular. Higher, more powerful, castes like Brahmins, Rajputs and Yadavs tend to have more money and easier access to the internet and old disparities are further accentuated by the internet.

Caste-based communities, however, aren't unique to Orkut.

Brahminsamaj.org is “a global platform for the Brahmin Community where you will learn, share and find lot of information, knowledge and fun.” Thambraas Muhurtham wants that “all Brahmins should come forward to marry breaking the sects and subsects within Brahmins, particularly Brahmins of Thamizhnadu.” It also points out that “the entire sects and subsects of South Indian brahmin population are totally vegetarians unlike certain brahmins of other parts of India.” A couple on the homepage of Marry A Brahmin claim that its “focused approach on Brahmin matches helped us find each other as true soul mates.” Brahmin Connections is “proud to present an opportunity and a platform to our young Brahmins and their parents to connect with each other across the world for the matrimonial purpose.” Brahmins Matrimony says that “it is the right place to search for your life partner!”

There are dedicated websites for sub-castes as well. Sakhdwipi aims “to provide a common forum for the Shakdwipis to know each other and interact with each other.” KeralaIyers aims “to delve into the history, trace the roots, portray the life of modern day Kerala Iyers, and chronicle the achievements of this community.” iKalyanam claims to be “the only exclusive site for Iyer matrimonials.” Shivalli Brahmins wishes “to bring together all Shivalli Brahmins residing in different parts of the world, through meaningful discussions about their traditions.” GSBMatch is a matrimonial website for the Gowd and Saraswat Brahmin community. ModhBrahmin.org and BrahmanSamaj.org claim that “history proves that the people of Modh Brahmin Samaj are very enterprising and very resourceful” and aims to “bring all brothers and sisters of Samaj close.” Jangid Brahmin Samaj is a community for Jangid Brahmins. RSBNet is “a single stop source of information regarding the origin, customs, culture, history of Rajapur Saraswath Brahmins.”

Similarly, there are dedicated websites for other castes as well.

Kayastha Matrimonial is a matrimonial website for the Kayastha community. Rajput Samaj is “presently predominately taking care of the Rajputs of Rajasthan” but in near future aims to be “taking care of the Rajputs living in India, Pakistan and abroad.” JatLand, “the online home for the Jats” is especially proud of its wiki.

The Dalit community is fairly active on the internet, even though it's miniscule on Orkut. The International Dalit Solidarity Network, which has the most sophisticated of all these websites, “works on a global level for the elimination of caste discrimination.” Dalit Solidarity Network “brings together organizations and individuals in the UK who are concerned with caste-based discrimination.” Dalit India has “papers on various specific issues of the Dalits of India living in India and abroad.” Dalit Freedom Network “partners with the Dalits in their quest for religious freedom, social justice, and human rights by mobilizing human, informational, and financial resources.” Dalit Solidarity is “committed to the principles of justice and equality for all Indians, regardless of caste, race, gender or religion.” Dalit Voice claims that India is “the original home of racism” as Dalits and Tribals, who “constitute the core of India's original inhabitants”, are kept enslaved by “alien Aryans”. Dalit Education aims to “transform lives and communities through the Christian message.” Indian Dalit Muslims Voice is a platform to discuss issues concerning Indian Dalit Muslims. Rohit Chopra has written about the tension between the elite Hindu nationalists and the disadvantaged Dalits on the internet.

In terms of content, the majority of these websites are focused on matrimonial match-making, but several of them seek to build international communities based on caste affiliations and offer tools like directories, bulletin boards and forums to their members. I have also noticed a tendency to establish a rather embellished history of the caste, with detailed biographies of the important personalities belonging to the caste. Ashok Kumar at Express India has a great description of the common features on these caste based websites.

Not surprisingly, Facebook has only 46 small Brahmin groups, 60 small Yadav groups, 126 smal Rajput groups and 41 small Dalit groups. The absence of caste based groups from Facebook is in line with its cosmopolitan user base. Orkut, on the other hand, should be a little concerned about its tendency to attract loonies of all types.

In the end, however, the cosmopolitanism of Facebook is an anomaly, and Orkut's crude caste communities merely mirror India's splintered society.

Cross-posted at Gauravonomics, my blog on social media and social change.

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I have put together the highlights in an IndiBlogger.in State of the Indian Blogosphere Dashboard –

You can also have a look at the full State of the Indian Blogosphere report at SlideShare –

Here are the highlight of the report –

- More than three-fourths of the blogs in the IndiBlogger.in community are written by men.

- The top five languages are English, Hindi, Tamil, Marathi and Telugu. 92% of the blogs are in English. Renie believes that Indic languages are under-represented in the IndiBlogger.in community, but the distribution between various Indic languages should be representative.

- The top five cities are Bangalore, Chennai, NCR, Mumbai and Hyderabad, which together account for almost three-fourths of all blogs. The city-wise distribution should be fairly representative, but the metros might be over-represented in the sample because these blogger may be more aware of IndiBlogger.in.

- The community is fairly active with 8% posting daily, 47% posting at least weekly and 88% posting at least monthly. In terms of recency, more than 80% blogs have been updated at least once in 2009. Both the frequency and recency data should be fairly representative.

- About 19% of the blogs have a Google PageRank or 3 or above and about 18% have an Alexa Traffic Rank of 3,000,000 or lower. These stats should also be representative.

- The Indian National Interest, Digital Inspiration and Gauravonomics are the three tops blogs in India, as per IndiBlogger.in's IndiRank algorithm. Rankings are always controversial, and IndiRank certainly is, because many important Indian bloggers haven't registered their blogs on IndiBlogger.in yet. I think IndiBlogger.in should not limit itself to submitted blogs and include as many Indian blogs as possible, starting with all the blogs in Amit Agarwal's directory of Indian bloggers. The blog owners can claim it later, if they are interested. This will quickly fix the issue of credibility of the rankings. Also, I think that there's value in being totally transparent about the ranking formula, like the AdAge Power 150 Ranking. Let's see if I can convince Renie to make these changes.

Maneesh Madambath at WATBlog has also written a blog post on the IndiBlogger.in statistics.

In the next IndiBlogger.in State of the Indian Blogosphere report, it might be interesting to do an analysis of how these stats have changed over time. It might also be interesting to use the IndiBlogger.in databse for network analysis using a tool like Linkfluence.

If you want more details of the study, or have suggestions on what other data might be interesting, or want to help us out with new types of analysis, contact Gaurav Mishra or Renie Ravin, or leave a comment below.

Cross-posted at Gauravonomics, my blog on social media and social change.

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Photo courtesy Al Jazeera under a Creative Commons License

The results for the month long Indian Lok Sabha elections are out and India has voted back the incumbent Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) into power with a decisive verdict, surprising many observers.

As I write this post, the results for 480 out of the 543 seats have been declared. The Congress is leading in more than 200 seats and UPA is less than 20 seats away from reaching the magic figure of 273.

The verdict is a reminder of the Indian electorate's love affair with the Nehru-Gandhi family and a coming of age of sorts for Rahul Gandhi, the young scion of the family. A jubilant Sonia Gandhi reiterated that Manmohan Singh will be Congress Party's choice for the prime minister. Manmohan Singh will be the first Prime Minister after Jawaharlal Nehru to return to power after a full five-year term.

The verdict has also led to some serious soul-searching within BJP. It seems that Lal Krishna Advani's political career is all but over. It will be interesting to see if BJP moves away from its Hindutva roots and repositions itself as a Right of Center party or becomes even more hardcore Hindu Right under the leadership of someone like Narendra Modi.

Some of the biggest upsets so far: Ram Vilas Paswan, Ram Naik, Renuka Choudhry, Vinod Khanna, Meera Sanyal and Captain Gopnath lost the election while Shashi Tharoor won by a record margin.

Summary of Reactions from Indian Bloggers and Twitter Users

The Congress supporters are jubilant, and the BJP die-hards are understandably glum, but most neutral Indian bloggers and Twitter users are happy with the verdict, for more reason than one.

The two national parties — Congress and BJP — have increased their tally by 40-50 seats. Both Congress and BJP have a more-or-less similar forward-looking national agenda (apart from BJP's obsession with Hindutva), unlike the regional parties who are focused on caste, language and state affiliations. The consolidation of the national vote is a sigh of relief for the urban Indian “elite”, who were worried about the increasing fragmentation in Indian politics.

The UPA is 15-20 seats short of the 273 seats it needs to form the government. This precludes the possibility of the opportunistic horse-trading many observers were expecting in the aftermath of the elections. The (almost) clear verdict for UPA is likely to result in a stable government that lasts for five years and isn't held hostage by the narrow agendas of the regional coalition partners.

The decisive Congress victory has also surprised most observers. Most predictions and opinion polls had predicted an indecisive verdict with a close finish between BJP and Congress and a rise in the power of the regional parties.

Some observers will see the verdict as a validation of the tried-and-tested methods of political campaigning in India. The BJP ran an aggressive 360 degree campaign on mass media and digital media, but it didn't work, like its 2004 India Shining campaign. The Congress ran a traditional campaign, focused on movie songs, local rallies and the charisma of the Nehru-Gandhi family, and succeeded. I would caution you against reading too much into this coincidence and mistaking it for causality. It's not BJP's campaign, but BJP's Hindutva ideology, that has failed the party. BJP has lost in spite of its brilliant campaign, not because of it.

#IndiaVotes09: Reactions from Indian Twitter Users

Twitter conversations related to the Indian elections fell into a few distinct categories, including retweets of news reports on the elections results, exuberance over the Congress win, some soul-searching over BJP's loss (from a very strong BJP support base on Twitter), and opinions on what the election results mean for India.

Apart from the themes I have talked about above, the #indiavotes09 hastag on Twitter had its own unique memes.

The first such meme was predictably self referential. After a handful of tweets on the #indiavotes09 hastag throughout the month long elections, the Indian Twitter community spent the day obsessing about election results, making #indiavotes the number one trending topic on Twitter. This led to the usual recurcive navel gazing about how an India-related hashtag is trending on Twitter and Economic Times even did a story on it.

@Hiway: Indian Twitter community too big and united to be ignored: #indiavotes09 is trending. (we've made many topics ‘trend' recently)

(Aside from the Economic Times story: As per ViziSense, which analyses web visitor statistics, there are about 533,000 India-based users of Twitter. Tweeple.in follows 31,000 Twitter users in India.)

Dina just pointed to an interesting graphic on the irrelevance of trending topics on Twitter, which should dampen the exuberance over #indiavotes09 trending on Twitter.

The second #indiavotes09 meme was about the failure of BJP's aggressive digital campaign.

@MaheshMurthy, the CEO and founder of digital agency Pinstorm, offered some interesting analysis on why the BJP campaign didn't work –

@MaheshMurthy: #indiavotes09 Don't think BJP campaign was brilliant. Strategy to project LKA as a strong leader was clearly wrong.

@MaheshMurthy: #indiavotes09 I dont think most of us thought we had weak leadership, or even if we did, that it was a big problem.

@MaheshMurthy: #indiavotes09 BJP would have had a better chance if it focused on the difference they would make that was relevant to us.

@MaheshMurthy: #indiavotes09 BJP campaign used the right medium: social/digital - but offered no relevant message. They were tuned out.

@MaheshMurthy: #indiavotes09 Googler to me: Advani using them as he wants to connect with young. For that you need medium AND message.

Other Twitter users also had interesting comments on BJP's campaign –

@Dina: I don't buy that BJP tactics were brilliant. To add to @maheshmurthy 's response, there were no conversations. It was classic push advertising.

@NikhilNarayanan: The Bloggers for BJP has just 120 bloggers as per lkadvani.in (count taken 2 days back). 120 is a very small number.

@Danishk: The issue with BJP campaign as I see it was they forgot that most people looking at those ads are learned people unlike masses.

@Amit3D: 30 million people access internet daily in India. Approx 10 mil voted and saw BJP's digimedia campaign. Don't think that was enough.

@Amit3D: So I guess BJPs digimedia campaign was big #FAIL. india is not US in numbers when it comes to internet.

@Sanjukta: Exactly what I just said. No body likes spamming. All those over the top in your face campaign backfired.

@mohyt: BJP poll results make me wonder if they'd lost by bigger margin had they not done their huge Social Media Marketing campaign #indiavotes09

@GasperDesouza: Advani tried an ‘Obama' in India, online campaign, et al. Now his head is on the BJP chopping block #indiavotes09

@b50: wishes the BJP well. They fought a hard, aggressive campaign. Best of luck for 2014. Be an Opposition we can be proud of. #IndiaVotes09

@mudittuli: BJP campaign managers are always disconnected with reality, they tried to do a Obama but got slapped in the face #indiavotes09

@NairArun: BJP's online campaign was desperate and tacky. The intent was to replicate Obama's success, but the execution was poor. #indiavotes09

@DeadPresident: Advani honours BJP youth campaign team http://bit.ly/gmuWI - congrats folks! @bjp_ and @missionbjp and the people behind those

I tried to argue on behalf of BJP's strategist Sudheendra Kulkarni, but I'm clearly in a minority today –

@Gauravonomics: BJP has lost in spite of its brilliant campaign, not because of it. #indiavotes09

@Gauravonomics: I agree that the BJP/ LKA strategy backfired. I meant that the campaign was brilliant at a tactical level. #indiavotes09

@Gauravonomics: The BJP campaign did have grassroots online support. Friends of BJP. Bloggers for Advani. Too many BJP supporters on #indiavotes09

@Gauravonomics: The fact that it didn't work (due to message etc.) doesn't mean that BJP's (digital) campaign was flawed #indiavotes09

@Gauravonomics: In fact, I feel a little sad for Sudheendra Kulkarni. Given what he had to work with, he did a really good job. #indiavotes09

The other big meme on Twitter today was writer and Congress candidate Shashi Tharoor live-tweeting the election results –

@ShashiTharoor: I have won with a majority greater than any Congress candidate in Tvm in 30 years… Truly humbling. Now the real work begins.

@navinpai: Wow….just found out @ShashiTharoor tweets!! I wonder if he does it or gets a crack team of writers to pen down 140 characters!!

@ArunRam: @ShashiTharoor Congrats! Hope the Congress party gives you a key cabinet post. India needs more professionals like you in politics.

@SheetalDube: I am wondering if the Indian cabinet might witness the highest % increase in literacy level with the inclusion of @ShashiTharoor.

@manishd: @shashitharoor, I think you would be the first MP to be on twitter. Great way to keep in touch with the electorate. We need more like you.

@SepiaMutiny: Congratulate Shashi Tharoor directly: @shashitharoor (see his live tweets as the results came in!) #IndiaVotes09 (via @sajahq)

@viveksingh: Looks like @ShashiTharoor is the most popular politician amongst the twitteratti #indiavotes09

@GauravKanoongo: How many Indian politicians are here on Twitter? I know about only @shashitharoor #indiavotes09

@acmhatre: @ShashiTharoor in all honesty, I didn't think you would win but congratulations. No the real test begins.

So, the top May 16 memes on #indiavotes09 were: 1. #indiavotes09 trending on Twitter, 2. BJP's aggressive digital campaign failing, and 3. @ShashiTharoor live-tweeting the election results. What else did I miss?

#IndiaVotes09: Reactions from Indian Bloggers

The same themes have also been dominant in the Indian blogosphere reactions to the election results.

Rajiv Dingra at WATBlog and Ashish Sinha at Pluggd.in wonder if BJP's “flawed” campaign strategy was responsible for its defeat. Bhatnaturally argues that BJP's campaign was too negative.

Veteran film director and independent candidate Prakash Jha reflects on his loss in Champaran.

Dina Mehta thinks that the Mumbai terrorist attack did not affect the elections because people do not want more fear and hatred and negativity being imposed on us by our politicians. In another post, Dina argues that Indian voters have voted for good governance and progress rather than good politicians.

Industrialist and independent member of parliament Rajeev Chandrashekhar compares his election predictions with the results and finds that, like most other pundits, he was way off the mark. The Overlord points out that both the Indian online community and the poll pundits were wrong in their election predictions.

BJP supporter Yossarin Offstumped says that the Indian electorate has voted for stability but chosen the wrong national party. Atanu Dey believes that the election results are a setback for India's development. BJP supporter Brajesh Mishra says that, instead of grieving, BJP should introspect and start preparing for the next elections. Friends of BJP co-founder Rajesh Jain says that BJP needs to decide if it wants to be Right of Center or the Hindu Right. Sush Jaitley analyzes what went wrong with BJP and says that BJP needs to apologize to the country. Jai Mrug at DNA says that BJP is back where it was a decade ago. B Raman at Rediff does a good roundup of the post-election conversations on pro-BJP websites.

Mehul Srivastava at BusinessWeek does an analysis on what the results mean for Indian politics. Zoya Hasan at DNA says that the verdict is a reaffirmation of the Indian electorate's faith in the Nehru-Gandhi family. Sidharth Bhatia at DNA believes that the vote for Congress is a vote for an inclusive India. An Indian Muslim says that the results are a verdict against divisive politics. S. Mitra Kalita at WSJ calls the verdict a victory for the global Indian.

The BBC India team did a great live coverage of the election results, so did the NDTV team, Indipepal, Sundeep Dougal at Outlook and a group of Indian political bloggers, including Offstumped.

I'll be updating this post with reactions to the Lok Sabha results from Indian bloggers and Twitter users. Please leave tips to interesting posts and your own reactions in the comments section.

Cross-posted at Gauravonomics Blog, my blog on social media and social change.

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Photo courtesy Chhavi Sachdev

The Indian blogosphere and mainstream media is abuzz with debate on why the voter turnout in Mumbai has decreased to 44.21% in spite of voter registration initiatives like Jaago Re and transparency initiatives like Vote Report India.

Most people are trying to explain why Mumbaikars didn't vote.

On a CNBC-TV18 panel discussion, independent candidate Meera Sanyal, Madhav Bhatkuly from Empowered Mumbai, B Venkatesh Kumar from Mumbai University and Vivek Gilani from MumbaiVotes try to explain the low voter turnout in Mumbai.

IANS explains the low Mumbai voter turnout by arguing that most Mumbaikars are only concerned about local issues, which were not really highlighted in the election campaigns. Neha Bagoria on Twitter says that most of the educated young voters in Mumbai are from other states for jobs and can't vote as their names aren't in voting list. Niyukti on Twitter believes that voter apathy to the 'same old politics' and heat wave are the two top reasons for lower voter turnout in Mumbai. Bombay Addict says that the apathy of the middle class is the reason for the low voter turnout.

Harshad Oak argues that the low voter turnout numbers may be a reflection of the Election Commission's inefficiency, instead of voter apathy. Neelakantan also points to issues with how voting lists in India are maintained. Amit argues that broken voting machines and missing voter names can't be an excuse for not insisting on voting.

Randheer Singh develops an elaborate conspiracy theory on why the Indian middle class doesn't vote. The Acron at National Interest calls for a more in-dept analysis of the Absent Indian Voter Syndrome.

Mohyna Srinivasan and Vrushali Lad are shocked and saddened that Mumbaikars didn't go out and vote. Kamal Chaturvedi didn't vote himself, but calls Mumbaikars shameless for not voting.

Subin, Dina Mehta, Chhavi Sachdev and Kayezad Adajania share their experience of voting for the first time. It's a sad story of missing voter names, confused poll officials and shoddy poll arrangements. Model-turned-writer Shobha De had an easier time voting. Rajesh Jain explains how he ended up not voting for the first time since 1992, because of his name missing from the voter list. Priya Ramani at LiveMint explains why she didn't vote.

Another set of people believe that the expectation that voter turnout in Mumbai would be high was wrong to begin with.

Columnist Vir Sanghvi is not surprised by the low Mumbai voter turnout and argues that we were deluded in believing that the Mumbai terror attack will lead to higher civic engagement amongst India's urban youth. Ananth Krishnan blames the media for creating a false expectation of higher voter turnout. Kaushal Karkhanis on Twitter says that most outreach effort focused on the classes, not the masses, who form the majority of voters.

Finally, a third set of people are trying to think of ways for encouraging people to vote in the future.

Rediff asks its readers if voting should be made compulsory in India, given the low voter turnout. Mohit Atale believes that the ‘none of the above option' would have led to a higher voter turnout.

I personally believe that this was an unprecedented election for India in terms of online voter registration, transparency and outreach initiatives.

These initiatives have tapped into the sense of outrage after the Mumbai terrorist attack, channeled it into constructive conversations, and created an online space for civic engagement. It is because of this groundswell that people like writer Shashi Tharoor , danseuse Mallika Sarabhai and ABN AMRO India chief Meera Sanyal stepped up to contest the elections.

Perhaps, these initiatives haven't resulted in a significant increase in voter turnout but they have laid a foundation for engaging India's urban middle-class youngsters into serious civic issues. Talk is cheaper than action, but civic engagement must predate collective action. It's a cycle we have seen in the US. In 2004, online engagement didn't get the nomination for Howard Dean, or the presidency for John Kerry, but it set the foundation of the netroots movement that Barack Obama tapped into in 2008. The 2009 elections in India are similar to the 2004 elections in the US.

Perhaps, in 2014, we will see a charismatic leader emerge on the national scene, who will capture the imagination of India's youth. In these elections, neither Congress nor BJP had a charismatic prime ministerial candidate leading from the front. Also, young people in India are disappointed with the sycophancy in the Congress, wary of the communal extremism in the BJP, and alarmed by the fragmentation in Indian politics as a result of the growing power of the regional parties. Therefore, we have seen discussions on section 49(O) and negative voting ever since the Mumbai attack. Hopefully that will change in 2014.

This post is part of the Global Voices special coverage on the Indian Elections 2009

Cross-posted at Gauravonomics, my blog on social media and social change.

Written by Gaurav Mishra · comments (2)
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It's not only a big election in terms of numbers, it's a big election for India in terms of timing. Last November, the terrorist attack in Mumbai shook up India's politically apathetic youngsters and brought them out into the streets. Since then, a series of digital civil society initiatives have sought to channel this newfound sense of civic engagement in the Indian youth into meaningful participation in the political process.

In the run up to the elections, online conversations in India have been charged with this civic consciousness. Transparency campaigns like No Criminals in Politics and Vote Report India and voter registration campaigns like Tata Tea's Jaago Re have caught the imagination of urban India's web-savvy youngsters, with their effective use of social media platforms like Facebook and YouTube.

Rashmi Bansal believed that, with the campaign, Tata Tea has taken corporate social responsibility further than most brands do. Rajesh Kumar wondered why only beverage companies do election themed social advertising. Indian Homemaker and Chavvi Sachdev shared their experiences with voter registration. Sanjukta did an interesting interview with Jaago Re campaign coordinator Jasmine Shah.

At the same time, the janus-faced Lead India/ Bleed India campaign by The Times of India has incited mixed reactions.

Anondan tore apart the Lead India print ad while Rajiv Dingra wondered about the rationale behind the Lead India/ Bleed India dichotomy. On Twitter, several users like Deepak and Kanika, found the Bleed India campaign “funny and creative”, while Sumant and Aadisht believed that Bleed India was “buzz gone wrong” and “badly done sarcasm”.

BJP leader Lal Krishna Advani's Obama-style digital campaign consisting of a blog, a blogger outreach program, and an aggressive internet and mobile advertising element, has also evoked strong reactions online.

Most bloggers, including Sampad Swain, Mayank Dhingra and myself, have praised BJP's campaign, but some, like blogger-turned columnist Sidin Vadukut have complained that it is an overkill.

The Congress Party's Bharat Buland campaign, built around the Oscar-winning song Jai Ho (let there be victory) from Slumdog Millionaire, has attracted a lot of criticism from bloggers like Vinod Sharma, especially after the BJP released a parody titled Bhay Ho (let there be fear).

Aparna Ray has captured some of the reactions to the BJP and Congress campaigns in previous posts on Global Voices.

Several bloggers like Rajesh Jain (associated with Friends of BJP), Offstumped are aggressively campaigning for BJP. The #indiavotes09 Twitter feed is dominated by hardcore BJP supporters like @offstumped, @centerofright, and @deadpresident, with only @vimoh and @b50 standing up for Congress.

Beyond the campaigns, bloggers have been critical of BJP's Hindutva agenda and the Congress party's obsession with the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty. Bhumika Ghimire has written about these critcisms in a previous Global Voices post.

The Indian internet community has also been abuzz with discussions on the controversy surrounding Varun Gandhi's inflammatory anti-Muslim speech and subsequent imprisonment, the incidents of shoe-throwing against Congress politicians P Chidambambaram and Naveen Jindal and BJP leader L K Advani, and the election campaigns of writer Shashi Tharoor , danseuse Mallika Sarabhai and ABN AMRO India chief Meera Sanyal.

In the midst of this spirit of civic engagement, some people have become fixated on the misguided idea of “negative voting” under section 49(O). Basically, the idea is that voters should have the right to ask for a re-election by selecting a “none of the above” option, if none of the candidates are acceptable to them. A chain e-mail falsely claimed that such a rule already exists. Many bloggers, like Deva Prasad and Vimoh, strongly supported the idea and even called it a powerful agent of change. A Facebook group and an online petition promoting the idea are getting some traction.

In terms of individual sources, the Outlook India Election Blog is doing a great curation role by linking to important stories from elsewhere. Social networking community IndiPepal has blogs from several well-known analysts. Blogger Chakresh Mishra is doing a series of state-wise pre-poll predictions for the Indian elections. Blogger Manoj Kevalramani is traveling through 11 states in 45 days to get a first-hand impression of the mood on the ground during the election period. The Indian Muslims Blog is writing about the elections from a unique minority perspective. Jai Hind, Indian Election 2009, Indian Elections 2009, Indian Elections, Speak India and Youth Ki Awaaz are some other blogs dedicated to election coverage. BlogAdda and OneVote are doing a great job of aggregating these conversations.

Cross-posted on Gauravonomics, my blog on social media and social change.

This post is part of the Global Voices special coverage on Indian Elections 2009

Written by Gaurav Mishra · comments (4)
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As the campaigns for the 2009 Indian Lok Sabha elections heat up, several new websites are aiming to become the default source of news and analysis related the 2009 general elections.

These websites, however, are directly competing with election microsites from mainstream media — Hindustan Times/ Google, TOI, Mint, DNA, The Hindu, Yahoo!, MSN, Rediff, NDTV, IBN Live, India Today, The Week, Economic Times, India TV, Aaj Tak, Business Standard, BBC and Al Jajeera– and need to offer something different to be useful.

All the mainstream media election microsites have similar features: details about parties, constituencies, candidates and manifestos, statistics about previous elections, and an overload of news and opinion related to the 2009 Lok Sabha elections. However, some microsites have unique features which stand out, so let me start by pointing to my favorite, often interactive, features on the mainstream media websites.

DNA, India Today, Business Standard and IBN Politics have user friendly pages for columns by some very well-known writers.

The Hindustan Times/ Google election microsite is based on Google gadgets which allows you to add individual features to your iGoogle page.

The WordPress-based Hindu Election Blog allows you to subscribe to specific tags and categories.

MSN has a useful news aggregator which allows to you find news by candidate, party, or state.

The Outlook India Election Blog is doing a great curation role by linking to important stories from elsewhere.

Of the new players, IndiPepal is perhaps the most ambitious, with blogs from several well-known analysts.

India Voting and Engage Voter also have content rich websites with some interesting features.

BlogAdda has a very well designed social media aggregator for the elections, which collates photos, videos, and posts from election-focused blogs.

OneVote also has a well designed social media aggregator that collates photos, videos, tweets, blog posts and news reports related to the India elections.

Vote Report India, a collaborative citizen-driven election monitoring platform for the 2009 elections, aims to aggregate direct reports about irregularities in the election process with news reports, blog posts, photos, videos and tweets related to the elections from all relevant sources, in one place, on an interactive map (see our earlier post for details).

With a wide variety of sources vying with each other, election-watchers in India and elsewhere are sure to find a source that fits their specific news and opinion needs.

Which are some of your favorite online sources for news and analysis on the 2009 Indian Lok Sabha Elections?

Cross-posted on Gauravonomics, my blog on social media and social change.

Written by Gaurav Mishra · comments (10)
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The month long general elections to the 15th Lok Sabha in India start from April 16, and there is wide speculation on which party, or coalition, will emerge the winner, when the results are announced on May 16th.

Here is a quick roundup of the pre-election predictions and the discussion around them in the Indian blogosphere.

According to the second Star-Nielsen poll, the Congress will win 155 seats (203 with UPA allies), while the BJP will win 147 seats (191 with NDA allies) (via TOI).

Arun Nehru at the Deccan Chronicle predicts that the Congress will win 157 seats (193 with UPA allies), compared to the 132 seats for the BJP (177 with NDA allies).

The Times of India predicts that the Congress will win 154 seats (198 with UPA allies), while the BJP will win 135 seats (176 with NDA allies).

According to The Week, the Congress will win 144 seats (198 with UPA allies), while the BJP will have to settle at 140 seats (186 with NDA allies).

India Today expects the UPA to win 196-205 seats, far ahead of the 172-181 seats for the NDA.

According to Reuters, the Congress with 139 seats will form the government, beating the BJP, which will win only 129 seats.

DNA predicts that the Congress-led UPA will win 184 seats, against the 177 seats for the BJP-led NDA.

Shreekant Sambrani at Business Standard predicts that BJP will emerge as the biggest party with 137 seats (184 seats with NDA allies), ahead of the Congress, which will win 119 seats (176 seats with UPA allies, including LJP/ RJD).

India TV also predicts that the BJP will emerge as the largest single party with 144 seats (187 seats with NDA allies), ahead of the Congress, which will win 133 seats (178 seats with UPA allies).

According to BJP's own survey, conducted by G V L Narasimha Rao, the BJP will win 160 seats (217 with NDA allies) compared to 135 seats for the Congress (180 with UPA allies) (via TOI).

The numbers for the UPA have come down in recent predictions as analysts aren't counting the numbers for Lalu Prasad’s RJD, Ram Vilas Paswan’s LJP or Mulayam Singh’s SP as part of the alliance anymore.

Earlier, in March, the Star-Nielsen poll had predicted that Congress will win 144 seats (257 with UPA allies, including 47 for SP/ RJP/ LJP), compared to the 137 seats for the BJP (184 with NDA allies) (via Reuters).

The CNN-IBN poll had predicted that the Congress-led UPA will win 215-235 seats (including SP/ RJP/ LJP), compared to 165-185 seats for the BJP-led NDA (via Reuters).

In 2004, the UPA had won 234 seats (with 145 seats for the Congress) and the NDA had won 184 seats (with 138 seats for the BJP).

The Outlook Blog written by Sandeep Dougal, by the way, has emerged as my single most useful source of news and opinion on the Indian Lok Sabha elections. This is a great example of the value a traditional news organization can add by linking out to others.

Several Indian bloggers are also posting their own predictions.

Vijay at OffStumped, an overtly pro-BJP blog, predicts that NDA will win 184 seats compared to 108 for UPA.

Blogger Arvind Katoch predicts that UPA will win 230-240 seats where NDA can win 180-200 seats.

Promise of Reason is also doing a series of state-wise pre-poll predictions for the Indian elections.

Rajesh Jain, who is also a part of the Friends of BJP group, has also been sharing his assessment of how the elections might turn out and believes that we will see another election in two years.

It seems that the consensus opinion is that the Congress will emerge as the largest party with 150-160 seats, while the BJP will win 130-140 seats. In any case, fewer parties will ally with the BJP, and it will need 175+ seats to have a stab at building a majority coalition, so we can safely assume that the Congress will be a part of the coalition government. Most observers are predicting that a Congress-led UPA-Left coalition will form the government.

Cross-posted on Gauravonomics, my blog on social media and social change.

Written by Gaurav Mishra · comments (23)
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As interesting as these initiatives are, the three most effective election campaigns in the 2009 Indian general elections are run by corporate brands: Jaago Re by Tata Tea, My Idea from Idea Cellular and Lead India/ Bleed India by The Times of India (Live Mint/ Thaindian/ Exchange4Media/ Hindustan Times).

In my earlier avatar as the custodian of a large brand in India, I was convinced that online campaigns in India could stand on their own, without support from ad spends in mainstream media. The tactics employed by these three successful campaigns have made me realize that online brand campaigns in India will continue to be driven by heavy spending in mainstream media.

The Jaago Re campaign was launched by Tata Tea and Janaagraha in September 2008 (press release) to start a voter registration drive in colleges and corporates in 35 cities across the country and register four million voters. The voter registration itself is driven through an interactive application on its website and kiosks, which helps users identify their constituency, prepares a ready to print voter registration form in five minutes, guides them to the nearest voter registration center and updates them via SMS when their names are added to the voting list.

The campaign, which is run by a small team of youngsters in their twenties (The Week), has an advisory board that includes former Chief Election Commissioner T S Krishnamurthy, Infosys founder Narayan Murthy and Rang De Basanti director Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra (Hindustan Times/ Indian Express/ TOI). The campaign has convinced several large colleges and companies to become 100 percent registered (TOI/ TOI/ Mid Day/ TOI/ Deccan Herald) and even convinced the election commission to allow bulk submission of registration forms.

Tata Tea has used a number of interesting ads to engage the Indian youth into the Jaago Re campaign.

Jaago Re main ad:

Jaago Re Use Your Finger! Use it to Vote!

Tata Tea has also tied up with various TV channels to create micro campaigns like Bindass TV's iChange campaign to support the Jagoo Re campaign.

Jaago Re Bindass TV Ungali Utha Vote Kar ad:

Jaago Re Disney ‘If I Were a Prime Minister' ad:

Jaago Re Channel V VJ Juhi ‘Vote ya Vaat' ad:

Jaago Re also has an active social media presence with more than 15,000 members on Facebook and almost 13,000 members on Orkut.

The campaign is now conducting free Shut Up & Vote rock concerts by Bangalore-based band Thermal And A Quarter (TAAQ) across 10 cities to to engage Indian youth in the electoral process (DNA/ Indian Express/ IBN Live/ Indian Express/ DNA):

Jaago Re has turned out to be an extremely successful campaign. Not only has it been a topic of a huge number of news stories and blog posts, and resulted in much goodwill for Tata Tea (Business Standard), it has also managed to register 531,395 voters so far, in spite of its run ins with a slow moving bureaucracy (TOI).

The Indian blogosphere is in love with the Jaago Re campaign. Rashmi Bansal believes that, with the campaign, Tata Tea has taken corporate social responsibility further than most brands do. Rajesh Kumar wonders why only beverage companies do election themed social advertising. Indian Homemaker and Chavvi Sachdev share their experiences with voter registration. Sanjukta has an interesting interview with Jaago Re campaign coordinator Jasmine Shah.

Idea Cellular's My Idea campaign is a continuation of its participatory democracy ad campaign where a lady politician, aided by her tech-savvy assistant Abhishek Bachchan, gathers the views of the citizens in her constituency using mobile phones:

The campaign, run by Pinstorm, asks people to submit an idea that can change India and vote on the ideas submitted by others. So far, within one month, more than 2,000 ideas have been submitted and more than 140,000 votes have been cast (Indian Television).

It's the Janus-faced Lead India/ Bleed India by The Times of India, however, which is likely to incite the most interesting discussions in the Indian blogosphere.

The Lead India campaign carries forward the theme of its 2007 campaign, in which it ran a nationwide ‘talent-hunt' to search for the next generation of Indian leaders. In its new avatar, it wants to enable the Indian electorate to make the right voting decision in the upcoming elections, by providing a platform for meaningful political debate and supporting the No Criminals in Politics campaign.

At the same time, TOI's Bleed India campaign parodies Lead India and asks:

Lead India? Where to? Up the garden Path? Round the Bend? And by who? Our Leaders? Lol!

So while the Times Of India tries to find new leaders for a new age (good luck gentlemen!), we focus instead on those who Bleed India; Masters of the Scam, Tigers of the Tightrope: Surely they deserve some acknowledgement of their genius - in staying above the law, beyond the law, in making it and in breaking it..wah! wah! Ladies and gentlemen…you have led us and yes you have bled us.

It then creates an elaborate parody of the typical Indian politician, Pappu Raj, with his own Facebook profile and Facebook page (Exchange4Media).

Anondan tears apart the Lead India print ad while Rajiv Dingra wonders what is cooking with the Lead India/ Bleed India dichotomy. On Twitter, several users like Deepak and Kanika, find the Bleed India campaign “funny and creative”, while Sumant and Aadisht believe that Bleed India is “buzz gone wrong” and “badly done sarcasm”.

Opinion is divided on whether Jaago Re, My Idea and Lead India/ Bleed India are really socially conscious campaigns, or blatant attempts to generate buzz, but if engagement is the benchmark for success, these campaigns are the most effective ones running in the election season in India.

Written by Gaurav Mishra · comments (3)
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