The 2009  elections in India are bound to be heavily influnced by Web technology.  We have already seen websites of bjp prime ministerial candidate Shir L K Advani. Website of Shri L K Advani has been creating a buzz in the cyberworld to reach out to a young audience. A huge percentage of first time voters and voters between the age group of 30 to 39 are the tech savvy crowd who spend more time on the web and are likely to respond via the web medium.

BJP has been making use of Web 2.0 and especially  of google adwords and making sure of its presence across the internet by spending heavily every day. The entire online campaign seems to be inspired from Barack Obama’s online campaign. The major difference in both the campaigns lies with the persons for whom the campaign is being run.. Obama is tech savvy and is able to speak the language of youngsters and the online trend but in case of L K Advani the picture is dark as he himself never seems to be in touch with technology. The age difference obviously is the deciding factor and another major factor is, Not just online but Barack Obama also used his technology offline and during his speeches and he made sure to refer to his website or address the youngsters in his social gatherings.

In person in all his speeches or social appearances L K Advani no where speaks about technology or doesnt even seem to refer to his website at anytime. Also surprisingly no other BJP politician seems to be even bothered about this web technology except the BJP’s very own Shri Narendra Modi. Infact it seems that both of them are trying to compete with each other over the internet and trying to prove himself one notch above the other. 

Will this really help BJP to earn votes is a debatable question but the very use of web technology ensures that politics is now getting web friendly and our only hope is that whoever wins will try and make the real use of the web technology in successful e-governance.

As the elections are just round the corner we will see increasing use of social media marketing techniques and all possible ways to reach out to the young audience. It will be important for the BJP team to work out a better and faster response mechanism rather than just reaching out the everyone. The web is a interactive channel and if people write back on the website or participate with comments on the blogs of Shri L K Advani then its important that he himself gets involved at some level in technology and respond back in time. If this does not happen then the entire campaign will backfire and will end up just like another “India Shinning” campaign which cost dearly to BJP earlier. 

So final success of this entire campaign will depend on how many youngsters and tech savvy people really come out to vote on the election day.