India’s first social media election

If Barack Obama was described by a section of the US media as the first social media president, whoever wins the 2014 general elections in India could well earn the moniker of being the first social media prime minister this country has seen. It would be no exaggeration to say that the 2014 elections are well and truly India’s first big social media election, inspired in no small way by the manner in which Obama successfully tapping into the power of social networks to win the 2008 US presidential election. An indication of the influence social media wields can be had from the fact that for the first time in India, the Election Commission will monitor social media spends of the candidates. One possible reason for the exponential rise in the use of social media is that an estimated 1.79 lakh new young voters would exercise their franchise on an average in each parliamentary constituency, as per the latest Election Commission data. (However, it needs to be pointed out here that internet penetration is not uniform throughout the country; therefore, social media would have an influence only in certain pockets.)

I recall reading a New York Times article that published the following quote explaining the phenomenon: “Thomas Jefferson used newspapers to win the presidency, F.D.R. [Franklin D Roosevelt] used radio to change the way he governed, J.F.K. [John F Kennedy] was the first president to understand television, and Howard Dean saw the value of the web for raising money[.] But Senator Barack Obama understood that you could use the web to lower the cost of building a political brand, create a sense of connection and engagement, and dispense with the command and control method of governing to allow people to self-organise to do the work.” That was in 2008. Today, social media has become ubiquitous in India and around the world. So much so that according to a studycarried out by Internet and Mobile Association of India (IAMAI) and IRISKnowledge Foundation, social media such as Facebook and Twitter are likely to influence at least 160 Lok Sabha constituencies out of 543 during the next general elections. According to some estimates, the number of social media users in India can be expected to rise exponentially by the middle of this year to several tens of million; it may not be much in absolute terms but when seen in the context of the reach of social media and its power of exponential influence it could make all the difference between winning and losing.

Sample the following statistics:

·      The internet population in India is among the largest in the world;

·      In India 30 new internet users are added every minute and a new Facebook user every second; and

·      Nearly half of all internet users in India use social media to keep themselves abreast of political developments.

These statistics only go to prove that there is a paradigm shift unfolding in the way elections are fought and political parties engage voters. Already we are seeing candidates and political parties alike experimenting with Google Hangouts, live broadcasts, audio-visual presentations on YouTube and online debates, besides making use of Facebook and Twitter. (The advent of social media in Indian election campaigns is not the only innovation going around. This election has also seen the entry of American-style “primaries” and “town hall” meetings to select candidates and engage with voters, respectively.)

Post-2014 Afghanistan: Back to the Future?

New Delhi

28 July 2013

Hamid Karzai, president
of Afghanistan

As Afghanistan prepares for life beyond 2014 its capital Kabul is seeing a steady stream of visitors from far and near, all seeking to reassure and to be reassured themselves that peace and stability will return to the landlocked country torn apart by conflict for the last 33 years. Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd paid a surprise visit to Afghanistan on July 27; his country has about 1,500 troops there but the bulk will be pulled out by the end of this year. Security and Foreign Affairs Adviser Sartaj Aziz of Pakistan and British premier David Cameron were there, too, as was the US’s Af-Pak envoy James Dobbins. An Indian delegation comprising officials from the ministries of external affairs and defence travelled to Kabul in the second week of July to follow up on Afghan President Hamid Karzai’s visit to New Delhi in the month of May with a wish list of items he would like the Indian government to share with the Afghan national army and allied security forces as the US completes pulling out its troops by the end of next year.

What should have been a moment of quiet satisfaction, reflective of the enormous goodwill India enjoys among the Afghan people and government alike for funding development projects worth billions of dollars, has turned into an embarrassment of sorts as President Karzai’s wish list has exposed the limits to what India can, and is willing to, do to shore up a post-2014 Afghanistan. It was quick to waitlist Karzai’s inventory of lethal materiel rpt materiel on the ground that there are many moving parts to the Afghan conundrum, namely Pakistan’s attitude towards Afghanistan and India, the Taliban’s own game plan, the moves for a possible reconciliation with the Taliban (as evidenced by the opening of a Taliban office in Qatar) and the extent of Pakistan’s role in it, the ethnic configuration of Afghanistan in the immediate future and last but not the least the eventual successor to Mr Karzai following the elections.

Notwithstanding New Delhi’s contention that while it is there for the long haul it would not want to “become part of the problem”, Kabul maintains that the Afghan national security forces must be equipped with the 

A map of Afghanistan (for
illustrative purposes only)

necessary capabilities – including capacity for logistics and equipment maintenance as well as adequate ground and air firepower – to execute independent operations against conventional and unconventional enemies. India and Afghanistan signed a strategic partnership agreement in October 2011, which dwelled on security, trade, capacity-building and people-to-people contacts. Specifically, India agreed "to assist, as mutually determined, in the training, equipping and capacity building programmes for Afghan National Security Forces". Therefore, Kabul’s desire to source hardware with Indian assistance should be viewed in that context. But if the Afghans were disappointed by New Delhi’s circumspection, they did not show it. As Afghan ambassador to India Shaida Abdali put it, “In the post 2014 period, we look forward to working with India .... At the same time, we renew our call on the international community to stay the course in Afghanistan.”

So could Afghanistan descend into chaos after 2014? While jury is still out on that, serving and former Afghan officials are of the considered view that the road to peace in Kabul goes through Islamabad. An Afghan diplomatic source insists that the Taliban leadership continues to receive protection from the Pakistani military and intelligence establishments. Afghan army chief General Sher Mohammad Karimi believes that Pakistan could end the Afghan war "in weeks" because “the Taliban are under their control". A former Afghan intelligence chief, Amrullah Saleh, in turn, says that some of the Western powers are in such a hurry to cut and run from Afghanistan that they are eager to differentiate between the threats posed by the Taliban and the Al-Qaeda and to downplay the dangers posed by a return of the Taliban (similar to how the chaos after the erstwhile USSR’s withdrawal from Afghanistan gave rise to the Taliban.) Ironically, this view is in contrast to New Delhi’s which has of late adopted a nuanced position on the issue of reconciliation with the Taliban; at a recent Asean meeting in Brunei External Affairs Minister Salman Khurshid said India supported Kabul’s efforts to establish a dialogue with all armed opposition groups, “including the Taliban”. For now, Abdali is confident that his country will not go the Iraq way from where the US troops withdrew in December 2011 but which continues to be riven by civil strife, or, resemble the days of the Taliban rule between 1996 and 2001. “Let me assure you against the 2014 myth of Afghanistan falling apart after the withdrawal of NATO forces from our country,” says Abdali. Watch this space!