BENGALURU: Every Batman needs a Lucius Fox, to make Batmobiles and Rocket Boots. With elections nearing, party ticket-hopefuls too are reaching out to techies for high-tech solutions. Politicos are willing to pay Rs 1 to 5 lakhs for packages that include apps that track voter behaviour and influence it, live-streaming of speeches on LED screens (a less-complicated version of Narendra Modi’s 3D holograms) and ‘video-inboxing’ to reach a large-majority of voters who do not have smartphones.
What does a constituency want?
Party workers are being sent out with apps that can analyse perception of a party among voters, conduct opinion polls and gauge public satisfaction with various schemes, like the app developed by Leadtech. “We do surveys and opinion polls and try to create a bridge with voters and our clients,” says Vivek Singh Badri the founder of Leadtech. “Recently we have developed and launched an Android mobile application for increasing the turnout of the voters.
This can also be used by party workers to track voter turnout on election day.” Details of voters in a constituency are entered into its database by one party worker, and another can track if these people have shown up at the polling booth and take corrective measures if they haven’t. “There are various other softwares that we offer like those for analysis of the data gathered from opinion polls and demographic surveys,” adds Vivek.
For voters, who are off the grid
This may be the Silicon Valley of India but Internet connectivity is still poor here. Janaadhar India therefore offers a tech solution -- ‘video inboxing’ -- to reach voters who are off the grid. Founder of Janaadhar India Manish Jha says ,“Nowadays, technology is helping politicians reach voters, earlier this was done offline with party workers personally visiting different homes.” According to their study, only a fraction of the voters use WhatsApp.
With “Video Inbox”, this company delivers videos via sms to feature phones. Live streaming was used by Narendra Modi in 2014, and this election Karnataka will try it for the first time. “We will travel with vans, which carry LED screens, into various constituencies,” says Manish. Leaders won’t have to go everywhere, instead their speeches will be live-streamed on these screens. They also offer apps that can analyse the strength, popularity and influence of candidates.
Tuning into likes and dislikes
Using GIS (or Geographic Information System) technology, Smart Neta maps an entire constituency’s political preferences. They track previous election trends, financial income of voters, caste and issues particular constituencies care about. They have mapped 28 constituencies of Bengaluru and are still adding various variables to fine-tune their campaigns. They are supporting women candidates with free services and offer cheaper rates to candidates who they think are doing good work.