Battleground Internet: Can Web wars win polls?

A virtual war has begun between BJP and Congress in Gujarat ahead of next month's Assembly polls.
Both parties are now busy uploading videos of speeches by their leaders and starting fan clubs on sites like YouTube and Orkut.
Presidential candidates for the 2008 elections in the US, Hillary Clinton and Obama have used the Internet to their propaganda too and now online campaigning has caught the fancy of Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi.
That was the question discussed on the show Face The Nation - conducted by Sagarika Ghose - With cyber wars in Gujarat, can the Internet become an election weapon? To debate the issue on the panel were Nalin S Kohli, convenor of All India Media Cell, BJP and Tom Vadakkan, media secretary, All India Congress Committee (AICC).

The Internet has been called the thermometer of the elite class. So how effective could it really be in reaching out to the voters? Doesn’t it only reach only a very small percentage of the elite?
“I’m not sure it’s a very small percentage. The point is that it’s one extra medium we’re talking about. Young India is connected through the Internet and SMSs in real time. But whether it would translate into votes is the real question,” said Nalin Kohli.

But is the BJP getting trapped in the Shining India Syndrome where you use cyber space which is basically just staying with the affluent and the middle class not reaching aam admi?
“They are still living in a time capsule of what I earlier suspecting as the Golden Age. The point is that the person is not voting on the internet, whether it’s the Internet or the intranet. This is essentially just a medium,” Tom Vadakkan. He questioned the real influence of the medium, saying India still had a long way to go as opposed to the US, a country that was effectively using cyber space in campaigning for the 2008 Presidential elections.

BJP’s online campaign apart, the Congress, too has a number of very Net-savvy MPs. “We are using the Net only as a medium. We have gone a step ahead using intranet, connecting from our party headquarters directly to satellite. But when you are communicating your action plan, don’t confuse the messenger for the message. This is what’s happening,” said Tom Vadakkan.