Politics: Does the None of the Above (NOTA) Option on Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs) Have Any Real Value?

There has been a lot of publicity and some muted cheering about the introduction of the None of the Above (NOTA) option on Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs) for the 2014 General Elections. Every voter has always had the right to go and announce that they DO NOT want to vote for any of the candidates. NOTA just makes this announcement electronic.  The Election Committee has been lauded for this too.

While the option was always available to voters, there have been very few people who exercised this right. Many knew it thanks to plenty of NGOs spreading the word but typically, a person thinks that it is not worth the effort to go to the voting venue, stand in the queue and then announce this. NOTA is not likely to change this feeling.

Theoretically one of the goals of the right to refuse to vote by either announcing it or clicking NOTA is supposed to prevent booth capturing. The idea is that if registered voters turn up and large numbers and exercise suffrage by any means, the political parties cannot send fake voters during the event or stuff their votes (in days before EVM) in ballot boxes after the end of the voting day. Even EVMs were introduced in an effort to curb the menace of booth capturing that had risen in the late 1980s (plenty of us remember journalist Nalini Singh’s daring interview of booth capturers taken in the dim lights of jeep headlights around mid-1980s) and peaked in the 1990s. There are still some questions around the effectiveness of EVMs in stopping or curbing booth capturing – but the jury is still out on this one. 

The other goal, of course is the clean up the politicians and political system.

Coming back to NOTA, let us consider two possible scenarios.

Scenario 1:

Consider that there is a 60% voter turnout (an optimistic figure, but this is a hypothetical scenario, so let’s just go with it) in a centre. 20% use NOTA. Of the remaining 40%, 10% vote for Party A; 9% for Party B; 5% for Party C; 5% for Party D and the remaining 11% give their votes to various Independents (a large enough contingent who do not contest to win, but to sell the votes they get).  

In this scenario the highest vote gatherer is NOTA. But it is likely that Party A that gets the highest votes amongst the candidates will be declared the winner.

Has NOTA then been effective?

Scenario 2

Again, consider a 60% voter turnout. Every single person chooses NOTA. That means 100% of voters reject all candidates contesting. What happens then? Will that particular centre have President’s Rule or will they have to live with the candidate/Party selected by the rest of the constituency?

Nett, nett, though NOTA seems to be an empowering button on the EVM, the real value of this option is unclear. Toying with possibilities makes it look like NOTA is a placebo, not a medicine to cure the malaise of rejectable and regrettable candidates getting tickets from national parties and finding place in the hallowed political grounds of India.

Sujata Garimella

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Internet: Google Coming Up with a New Tool for Marketers

Google has announced that it is developing a tool that will function as a virtual marketplace for businesses of all types. The plan, unveiled so far, is that all businesses can advertise their products and services on this platform through live video. 

This seems to be some mashed up form of Google Hangouts, YouTube, SlideShare and LinkedIn. Not sure yet about what “live” video means either – do it mean that you can upload and telecast something live, like news channels do? That would be an extension and an interesting expansion of the WebCam and LiveMeeting functionalities.

Google has a penchant for identifying growth sites and then try to get into it. Somehow Google also seems to be somewhat hung up on Amazon. When Amazon first became massive, Google had introduced Google Books – but got into some sort of legal hassles and discontinued the service as it was first envisaged.

This time round, e-commerce is all the buzz. As people are more willing to buy all sorts of stuff online, e-commerce sites have really picked up. It is par for the course that Google would like a share of that pie – and with Google’s virtual muscle, it may just become the largest player too.

As of right now it is being worked upon, but Google is accepting EOIs (Expressions of Interest) at https://helpouts.google.com/welcome.

The channel seems to be promising in multiple ways. You can

• Run Ads
• Have testimonials
• Have Experts talk to customers
• Offer live support
• Offer product tutorials
• Schedule presentations (for individuals and / groups)
• Personalize customer interactions and experience

These are some possibilities. Not sure how it will pan out, but you may want to check it out and start planning your campaigns – because Google is sure to offer something more and the giant is likely to take off in a big way when it launches. 

Politics: . Modi, Change Your Speechwriter – NOW!

Narendra Modi is currently the politician in India the whole world is watching. The BJP Prime Ministerial candidate has immense hopes hung on the peg of his winning. In a nation riddled with corruption, the famously non-corrupt Modi represents hope and aspiration. Through 2013, so far, there has been no stopping the man. There are more converts to the Modi mania in the country than there are to any other cause.  In fact, he is considered a shoo-in for the top post (Prime Minister) of India in the 2014 elections. This belief is worldwide and has been confirmed and strongly underlined by the Goldman Sachs study on financial markets post-Modi helming the country. (Just for info, this report says that the Indian financial market will improve, strengthen and stabilse after Modi becomes Prime Minister. Naturally, the Congress has denounced Goldman Sachs for even having conducted such a study. But the deed is already done, and ‘Modi as PM’ is practically announced in boldface around the globe via this report).

One of Modi’s greatest strengths is that he speaks well. Really well. That is what was turning more people to him. Then inexplicably, this strength started getting dissipated. First, his self-propaganda about his achievements in Gujarat in totally inappropriate venues and on inappropriate platforms became a bit too much. Then, shockingly he started showing great ignorance about India’s history and geography! This is unforgivable. He is the Bharat Boy. The man from grassroots. The man who has spent a lifetime in public work and politics. The man whose dyed-in-the-wool Indian-ness is his strong suit. Such a man has no business making faux pas like stating Alexander was defeated by Biharis. Or declaring the Chandragupta Maurya belonged to the Gupta dynasty. Or placing Takhsila in Pakistan.

No Mr. Modi this is just not done.

It has shaken people’s faith in you. Your supporters cringe in embarrassment with no way to defend you and your opponents are having a field day for having got justifiable brickbats to fling at you.

Accepted that you may not know your history and geography, but you do have an army of folks propping you up. You have speechwriters. In all probability you are just delivering the speeches handed over to you. Get their act and yours in place, Mr. Modi. Speechwriters who are including incorrect historical and geographical facts about India must be out of your team -- immediately.

Additionally, you can be forgiven for not knowing the past, i.e. history. While you are brushing that up, make sure you do not make any historical references that you do not know as proven facts. Do not agree to deliver monologues about things you are not certain about.

Not knowing the geography of India is less forgivable. If you aspire to be the First Person (Prime Minister) of the country, you better know the country. Do a crash course on it as priority. You cannot – cannot – aspire to lead a country without knowing it. You cannot expect people to let you do it either.

Mr. Modi, leave rewriting the history and changing the geography of the country alone. There are enough blundering politicians committing enough faux pas – do not join that bandwagon. Your strength is current affairs – stick to speaking about those.

These recent speeches have marred the upward rise and put a mild sort of brakes on the unstoppable Modi juggernaut – get your act together and get on a roll again – else you face a possible derailment.

Society: Is there an End to the Telecalling Menace in Sight?

Have you received calls from people selling insurance, offering loans, credit cards, plots, houses, astrological readings, jobs et al? Have you received these calls repeatedly despite telling them that you are not interested? Despite registering for DND (Do Not Disturb)? Have you ever tried asking the tele-callers where they got your information from – only to get roundabout responses essentially saying that they don’t know? Isn’t this the most galling thing – ever?

This seems to be something that we face in India more than anywhere else in the world. Are the cell phone companies selling the information? Is it sundry websites?

There are no answers. Only more calls.

But it looks like the powers-that-be are taking this menace a little more seriously. Initially Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) had introduced a DND option. Over the past few years that doesn’t seem to have worked too well. Now TRAI is tightening the regulations. Companies have to register with them to be able to make calls. Only the registered companies are going to be allowed to make cold calls selling their wares to random folks. Besides this, they also have to follow certain guidelines (including the DND request) plus if there are complaints made about a company for cold-calling and they are not registered, they have to pay a fine of Rs. 5,000/- per complaint.

What about the SMS’ then? Everyone with a mail ID has certainly got lottery winnings and business offers in their mailboxes. You must also have got mails from relatives (wives, sons, nephews, uncles etc.) of dead African kings, clerks in banks with dormant accounts holding mesmerising sums of money asking you to help them get the money out of whichever country they claim to be from. You’ve got these, right? The very same ploy has now shifted to SMS’. The same stories are now being sent on cell phones. If you haven’t yet got those messages, it won’t be too long before you will.

While the TRAI effort sounds good it is not thorough. Besides, it’s been almost two to three months since the new regulations have been introduced but calls still come in – though, admittedly, the number has reduced.

While it looks like the end of unsolicited calls is at an end, I have always wondered how the telecallers get our cell phone numbers. Not only do they have the numbers but they refer to the person answering the call by name. It is likely that they have more details, like maybe, our addresses also. This has been both, an irritant and a matter of great concern to me.  If insurance companies and banks can get hold of our information so easily, how easy it would be for someone with nefarious purposes to not only get our information but also to hack into it and maybe even thieve our identity! The thought lies uneasy in my head.

Identity theft is common enough in the Electronic Age. Add to that the possibility of tech-savvy individuals belonging to terrorist outfits. It means for no fault other than moving with the times, one can be compromised, framed and arrested for crimes that they didn’t even dream as probabilities. Scary thought, isn’t it?

Society: Shame! India 3rd in Online Sex-Offenders

Today an Amsterdam-based NGO made public identities of 1,000 online sex offenders. The NGO created a digital persona, Sweetie, a 10-year old Filipino girl. Over two and a half months they tracked the number of men wanting to pay Sweetie for various inappropriate acts. They created a database of 20,000 men across 71 countries. They have released what seems to be the first list of 1,000 sex-offenders. USA topped with 200 odd; UK came next with 110 and most shamefully, India is third: 103 men. 

Should this be surprising? Hardly. A quick scan over headlines of dailies and online publications for November 6^th shows at least half-a-dozen crimes against children aged up to 17 years including rape and murder of a 5-year-old and rape and murder of a 17-year old girl by her own father (supposed “honour” killing)!

So why this feeling of horror at the information released by the Dutch agency?

Because most of those stories carried by the publications involve uneducated men. Their behaviour is horrifying enough but to think educated men slink into their rooms, switch on their computers and indulge in filth and destruction of childhood is too disgusting and too much to bear.

It is thoroughly disturbing to know that these people are probably the same trusted friends of families who abuse children of their friends and extended families – now, increasingly their own daughters too.

End this abuse today. Please.