There are various reasons for the more active usage of ICT in campaigns this time. Such technology has penetrated the country in the last five years. It appeals directly to young voters in the 18-35 age group, who constitute almost 60% of the 46 million or so Internet users in India. The Internet is influencing India’s urban belt and the campaigns cannot ignore it.
The experiences of a few other countries have also had an impact—the most prominent case being the last presidential elections in the US where the extensive use of cyberspace by both candidates and the wealth of information on the policies and the candidates’ track records made comparisons easy for the common voter. In hindsight, the more active online campaigner, US President Barack Obama, clearly gained an advantage through this. A recent study in Australia of the impact of online campaigns in voting showed that Web campaigning had a positive role in the success of a candidate.
While it will be interesting to see the extent of content being loaded in cyberspace related to the elections, it will not be possible for the Election Commission (EC) to monitor all such content, that would generally cater to the urban middle class. After all, efforts to globally regulate the content on the Internet have met with debatable success.
So far, EC has done a good job and it would be best for EC to sensitize candidates to regulating content in cyberspace. EC should only step in when the candidates refer to it cases of slander or harmful and abusive content, which, in any case, can be dealt with the now revised and stringent provisions of the Information Technology Act, 2000. Similarly, derogatory emails and SMSes can be dealt with strictly through the provisions of existing laws. Likewise, EC should take strong notice of reports of email viruses being spread in the guise of campaign emails as such a trend has been seen in other parts of the world.
While it remains to be seen how much of an advantage political parties will have in using cyberspace, the fact remains that the medium cannot be ignored. That is why both the major parties have promised to do more to improve the reach of ICT if voted to power.
Subimal Bhattacharjee is country head in India for General Dynamics. These are his personal views.