Bangalores campaign 2.0……..Saritha Rai
Bangalore, Indias Silicon hub and its global city has voted this weekend to elect representatives to its corporation. The city elections came nearly nine years after the last one in November 2001.
But some things had not changed. The same political parties that had rolled out tired promises of turning Bangalore into a Beijing or Singapore have fielded candidates. Dare the citizens of this city of seven million hope that those elected this time will deliver?
The run-up to the election was typically chaotic. There was violence when the Congress candidates list was being processed. There was plenty of name calling. External Affairs Minister S.M. Krishna said Bangalore was covered by an eclipse under the BJP. BJP MP Ananth Kumar responded by calling Krishna a migratory bird.
Despite the messy politics, there were encouraging signs. In Indias hi-tech capital, technology is helping strip away any excuses that the educated classes could dream up for not marching to the polling booths to vote.
Bangalores interactive city magazine Citizen Matters used an innovative tool to gather and compare candidates profiles in the various wards. Through crowd sourcing, the online magazine shared a questionnaire with its readers, then collated and shared the data collected about the various candidates.
Dozens of online venues pointed out how citizens could dig out their names in the voter rolls, the location of their polling booths, and the antecedents of their candidates. There is much information available to reduce the I-dont-know-how excuses for not voting, said Meera K., co-founder and editor of Citizen Matters.
Bangalore stretches over 800 square kilometers and has acquired itself a bruhat (mega) tag, labelling its city corporation Bruhat Bangalore Mahanagara Palike. But the mega card only magnifies the complexity of the citys woes traffic, transport systems, sewage, power and water supply.
This time, activist groups worked at combating voter weariness, the first step towards getting a more responsive set of corporators.
In Bangalores Koramangala neighbourhood, which consists almost entirely of educated middle, upper middle classes and upper classes, a group of doctors, lawyers and software industry professionals calling themselves Smart Vote gathered to dedicate time each week to smooth the election process.
Working with the State Election Commission, they used simple software to spot and remove duplication in the electoral rolls, useful in eliminating proxy voting. Mistakes and duplications in about 19 of Bangalores 198 wards were corrected using the software.
P.G. Bhat, a volunteer with Smart Vote, said the software effortlessly showed up errors in the voters lists. For instance in Koramangala, several people had two wives or two husbands, one voter was shown as 665 years old as per his date of birth, and many registered voters had their ages showing as below 18.
A lot of cleaning up is necessary, says Bhat, whose Pluma Solutions wrote the software that spotted UID chairman and Koramangala resident Nandan Nilekanis daughters name duplicated four times in the voting list. Each entry had her age listed differently as 18, 19, 20 and 21, said Bhat.
Smart Vote set up a system by where all a registered voter had to do was text or email. The voter then got a personalised email or SMS providing the ward number, serial number, polling booth, and its location. Technology showed that it was not magic, and you could no more blame the system for not voting, Bhat said.
Software came to the rescue when a candidate arrived at the State Election Commission to file his nomination but could not locate his name on the voting list. Several hours of searching later, former journalist and theatre personality Prakash Belawadi reached out to Smart Vote that used software to dig up his name and ward number so he could file his nomination.
Political parties and candidates are not far behind in the use of technology. Lok Satta, the new generation party which originated in Andhra Pradesh, is making a debut in Karnataka by contesting the Bangalore city elections. Lok Satta is unabashed in its use of technology in campaigning.
Its volunteers, many of them techies who work overseas, used software to focus the partys vote bank. Youth and women are our support base so software helped up make lists of those in the 18-25 and 25-35 age brackets so our campaigners could target them face-to-face, said Ram Lakshmi, president of the Karnataka Lok Satta.
The party has fielded five candidates, including a metallurgical engineer and a gynecologist who have both worked in local welfare associations. Belawadi, the former journalist also contesting as a Lok Satta candidate, said his campaign was also on Twitter, Facebook and mobile phone. Im reaching out to those young Indians who want a change, he said.
Belawadi is on foot to reach parts of his Sunkenahalli ward whose slum-dwellers are far removed from the hi-tech parts of this global city. But technology will play an important role in the elections of the future, he predicted.