// 02.23.2009 at 4:52 pm //

India still votes for traditional media

India went to vote for its lower house of Parliament in April-May 2004. The India Shining campaign of the ruling National Democratic Alliance (NDA), led by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), had reached its crescendo, and the party’s success was predicted to be a piece of cake.

As if to reinforce the message of NDA’s achievements, the media strategists of the BJP embarked on another campaign in the last few weeks before the polls;  whenever users picked up their mobile phones to ring up an acquaintance, they were first made to listen to a brief address by the-then Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee on “Why BJP.” When the final results were announced in May 2004, the nation was stunned.

In spite of a brilliant image of the NDA’s achievements at home and abroad, including the difficult feat of bringing India close to Clinton administration despite nuclear tests, the NDA was routed and the Congress came to power in a coalition arrangement.

A key ally of the BJP in NDA, the Telugu Desam, headed by Chandra Babu Naidu, suffered severe losses in the assembly elections held simultaneously in the state of Andhra Pradesh. This, despite the accolades Naidu had won for transforming the administration in the state with his thrust on e-governance.

Press enter democracy: election hype in India. (CC by-nc-nd; Photograph by Ben Piven)

It took political parties and analysts some time to realise that in India, a carefully cultivated image of political parties aided by media strategies is not the prime catalyst in the fortunes of a politician or a political party. Unless basic issues of hunger are addressed, the voter will not be impressed by media gimmicks.

Basic bytes

To everyone’s surprise, the IT back end of the world is still not ready to use IT-enabled services when it comes to elections. Unlike the election campaign in the US, when President Barack Obama made optimum use of various online forums, Indian election campaign strategies still primarily comprise of old formats, including election rallies, door-to-door contact and posters.

As Paranjoy Guha Thakurta, editor of Realpolitik and author of ‘Divided We Stand’, states, “There are very few people in India who are using the Internet on a regular basis. Even if you look at the world by visiting the website www.internetworldstats.com you will see that only a little over one-and-a-half billion people on this planet earth have ever accessed Internet at any point of time so far, which means three out of four people have not used the Internet. Now if this is true for the world as a whole, the digital divide in India is equally stark and real.”

Startling stats

He contrasts the Indian situation with that of the US, where there are 150 million computers for a population of 300 million, which effectively implies one computer for every two people. In comparison, he says, you have less than 30 million computers for a population of 1.1 billion people, or less than three per cent. Less than 10 per cent of the Indian population has ever accessed the Internet. Compared with the 15 million people using the Internet, there are more than 300 million telephones in India. That means there are three telephones for every 10 Indians.

Also, there are 120 million TV sets in India. And if you assume that each TV set has four or five viewers, then you have more than half the country’s population watching TV. This explains the reliance of political parties on TV, rather than the Internet. “India is not America,” concludes Thakurta. “As far as political campaign and reaching out to the people is concerned, the Internet will have a limited role.”

This is the conclusion that Alok Mehta, group editor, Nai Dunia also draws, as he points to the fact that 70 per cent of India’s population still lives in villages and the use of online media is confined to the young generation in state capitals. There’s some glamour and hype around the new media, which attracts the young educated voter, he feels.

The Indian electorate, while basking in the glory of its information technology wonders, is a tough client when it comes to buying a political argument. It takes more than a net-savvy image to please him, and political parties have learnt it, sometimes at a heavy cost.

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// Tagged Case Studies, BJP, Congress, Elections, India, online, Rahul Gandhi