A new way to vote - Indian General Elections 2014 with social mobile apps

This entry was written for a contest organised by IndiBlogger and WeChat: here's the contest page

Ok, so everyone (above 18) can vote, and presumably everyone who can vote (at least in urban and semi-urban India) has a phone. Some of them also have smartphones with apps that can do everything from entertain you, to inform you, to keep you in touch with friends (on a second-by-second basis), and even show you pictures of cats doing Aarti with Alok Nath.

So how do you put this massive infrastructure to get people out to vote? For, if past records are any guide, voting in a General Election isn't necessarily always high in priority for people.

Here are some ideas on getting butts to booths:

1. Mobile+Social is a great way to show off your achievements. How about making the casting of a vote as an achievement worth bragging about? And even something that gets publicly commended? Here's one possibility:

- Let's say you go to an election booth to cast your vote. You get 'indelibly' inked on your finger.

- Now, get out, and take a pic of your finger with a mobile app. This sends it to a special a/c (say, a person/group on WeChat) or a twitter a/c or a FB page or an email id.

- Get a personalised autographed pic as a 'thank you' from your favourite film/sports star - people who have signed up to be election ambassadors. (Remember the BCCI-Sachin Tendulkar autographed digital picture). Perhaps even the Chief Election Commissioner or even the President of India!

- Now share that around on your network!

2. Mobile is a great way to get people banded together, to plan for a trip. Use a mobile app to find out when your friends are planning to go visit the polling booth. Or use it to get a lift to the polling booth from someone in your neighbourhood, in case you don't have easy accessibility to the location yourself. Use Mobile for Mobility!

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3. Finally, sign up as a volunteer with the mobile app to help (gently) get people in your network out to vote. The app tells you who among your n/w is yet to go out to vote. Give them a call or message them on election day and see how you can get them to go and vote. You can even get a series of avatars in which to make this plea: for example, the Arnab Goswami avatar will help you ask: "the nation demands to know why you haven't yet voted!"

Ok now, go out there, and vote. That's the least you can do for yourself.

Number games

Let's assume India's voting percentages in its general elections is about 50%. Let there exist a country half of India's population such that its voters register almost 100% voting in its elections, i.e. greater than India's turnout.

Would that still make us the world's largest democracy?

The middle path

The most common election day talking point was how we pointed to our index finger just before pressing someone's button and they asked for our digitus impudicus instead. In addition to this digital revolution, the marking of our franchise status was a long vertical line as opposed to the heavy dot of the past. Why this change, I do not know, but it did make for interesting post-poll conversations.

"Did you vote?", they would ask. You could conveniently show them the middle finger in response. It was even better if they hadn't voted, for the gesture could serve as double entendre.

Given that polling percentage in Pune was reported to be 40%, perhaps it is time for a "say छी! or "Don't mess with Texas" kind of in-your-face campaign. In मराठी, we could say: "vote करा, बोट दाखवा".²

Notes 1: I am not a Simpson or Ekalavya; I do possess a fifth finger which also happens to be a thumb.
2: meaning "vote and show (the) finger"

Suresh Kalmadi and the cylinders

A flier with Suresh Kalmadi's election promises for Pune landed up with the newspaper. Largely on expected lines (Kalmadi has always taken the sports-global city track) Two items caught my eye. The first states his intention to "get the Olympics to Pune in 2020" which made me wonder if it was not possible to develop Pune sensibly without linking it to ambitious sporting events. The second promised to "make Pune a 'cylinder-free' city".

Unless I'm really out of touch with local realities, I wonder where this issue came from. First, I couldn't understand what kind of cylinder menace was implied here. Was this to bring piped gas to Pune as has been implemented in Thane? Is this really a major issue in Pune, as opposed to the usual roads/pollution/traffic/housing tracks that are far from being solved problems?