Influencing the election?

INDIA: A lively selection of games, songs, cartoons and opinion polls has been created to get the attention of potential voters in India. The sites are being created by the political parties, voting groups and companies to accompany elections in India, which are running from 16 April to 13 May.

According to analysts, the attacks in Mumbai last November inspired individual citizens and organized groups to start online forums aimed especially at influencing young voters. "We started as a reaction to the terror attack on Mumbai. It was more like a protest," Somashekhar Sundaresan, who started an online movement called Black Badge, told the BBC. "Voting patterns are not really representative of the people, as most people do not vote.”

"Voting patterns aren't representative of the people," says organizer Somashekhar Sundaresan.

Another election campaign began as advertising for Tata Tea. Many people regard Tata's Jaago re, or “wake up” campaign, as an appeal to young middle-class voters to become active. As Tata Tea official Sushant Dash says: "The campaign said, 'Don't just wake up, awaken!'."

Thanks to websites such as engagevoter.com and indiagoes2vote.com, large numbers of non-resident Indians (NRIs) are also getting involved in the election. However, even enthusiastic supporters say the influence of these sites is limited in India, where only about 7 per cent of the country’s 714 million voters have access to the internet.