By Saritha Rai, Contributor

Earlier this month, Gujarat chief minister and BJP’s prime ministerial contender Narendra Modi ousted Congress minister Shashi Tharoor as the Indian politician with the most followers on Twitter. Modi is closing in on 2 million followers while Tharoor, who had long-reigned as the most popular, trails just behind. Modi’s presumed rival for the prime ministerial post, the Congress’ Rahul Gandhi is conspicuous by his nonexistence on Twitter. Modi and Gandhi are going head-to-head on Facebook where their fan pages are garnering a multitude of “likes”. As India’s general election nears, the colorful political rallies and raucous sloganeering is yet to begin. But the digital face-off between political parties and their leaders has already reached a shrill extreme. The main Congress and BJP have set up what are dubbed ‘digital war rooms’ and mandated that leaders get active on Twitter. Each party is mobilizing thousands of impassioned supporters on social networks. Even the newly-launched Aam Admi Party (Hindi for common man’s political party) of anti-corruption crusader Arvind Kejriwal is vociferous on social media. With even more frenetic social media activity forecast in the coming months, India’s upcoming general election is giving an inadvertent, huge boost for Twitter and Facebook. “Politics, and indeed democracy, is moving from the old model of one-way political rhetoric sans any real participation to an increasingly voluble, energetic, fractious, interactive engagement on social media,” said Rajeev Chandrasekhar, an independent member of the Indian parliament, who formerly founded and then sold telecom operator BPL Mobile. “On social networks, politicians cannot hide from scrutiny and interactivity.” India has the third-largest base, after the United States and China, of internet users. In reality, the reach of the internet, and consequently social media, is limited, as its nearly 150 million users represent a fraction of the total population. Of these, however, two out of three users are said to access social networks daily. India is shaping up to be an important market for online advertising. Google currently leads in online revenues in India, followed by Facebook. India’s Twitter base, about 20 million users as per a study by the Internet and Mobile Association of India, is growing rapidly. Meanwhile Facebook said in a recent SEC filing that India and Brazil represent key growth regions in the first quarter of 2013 compared to the period a year ago. It reported 78 million monthly active users (MAUs) in India in the March quarter of 2013. India could boast of the world’s largest base of 277 million Facebook users by 2017. While social networks’ growth is slacking off in the West, populous countries such as Brazil, India and Russia offer plenty of growth room. Social media’s new relevance in Indian electoral politics is highlighted by the fact that the small population active on these networks is influential in urban constituencies. One study says that Facebook and Twitter could help decisively swing votes in 160 of India’s 543 parliamentary constituencies. That could be the change. In the past, India’s urban, educated voters have largely shied …read more

Source: FULL ARTICLE at Forbes Latest