Indian leaders, who used to be famous for their charismatic speeches in front of huge crowds before the elections, are discovering new methods to reach out to their audiences. More and more politicians are now using the Internet as a tool to market their political images and messages. Hindu nationalist BJP leader L.K. Advani has conducted famous online voting campaigns; his party colleague Narendra Modi has been sharing his political views and ideas with the public through his official website. And Minister Shashi Tharoor, a former UN Under-Secretary General, has half-a-million followers on Twitter.

Explaining why more and more politicians are jumping on the bandwagon these days, Pushker Srivastava, Head of Adiwise, a website developing company in India, says:

"Actually as per the census, 50 percent of India is young! They are the people who use technology more, so politicians think this is the finest tool, very powerful to woo them. And of course social awareness is also coming up as well with these networking sites and all."

Targeting youth and middle class

Saif Iqbal is 24 years old and a regular Internet user. He says it is obvious why political leaders have started using the internet to target the urban middle class and students.

"This urban middle class population is very politically active in universities and colleges. This population is already educated and Internet friendly."

More and more, politicians, including those of the older generations, have realised that they can use the interest to reach potential voters, whom they could not reach before.

"The middle class literate young people who are upwardly mobile, are influencing public opinion. And to reach them, the traditional methods of politics like organising rallies or meetings are not very useful now,” says Anand Pradhan of the Indian Institute of Mass Communication in New Delhi. “By using these sites, the politicians are also answerable to those young people who are raising questions."

Transparency and authenticity

However, Debojyoti Biswas, a master's student from Presidency College in Kolkata, does not agree. He thinks traditional means of communication are more authentic than the Internet because politicians can easily select which questions to answer in online interviews and ignore the difficult ones: "If it is face to face, then they will have least chances to avoid those questions."

But media expert Pradhan points out that under the traditional system, politicians have not been very accessible to ordinary people:

"Till now the Indian political system is not very transparent. But these online discussions will make it much more transparent. There will be some controversies, but sometimes controversies are good for democracy."

Limitations of technology

Dhiman Naha, a middle aged working professional, is worried that Internet politics will simply pass the majority of Indians by:

"India is not at that technological stage where you can reach out to people in the countryside."

While controversy continues as to whether political leaders should keep twittering, blogging or developing websites to interact with the urban, tech-savvy population, many experts believe it is - when viewed overall - a positive step to get more young people in India interested in politics and thus strengthen democracy.

Author: Debarati Mukherjee
Editor: Grahame Lucas