I have been helping spread the word about my friend Vivek Gilani’s amazing portal, www.MumbaiVotes.com. It stuck me that being a journalist myself, I must write something about it and my perception of his project, from a third party perspective, as if i were a journalist. So, here it is. If you have any queries, please write to me at [email protected]. Please, if you like what you read below, do help spread the word. Vivek does not have millions to spare on advertising, only the best wishes of millions like you. .
Often, the most common platitude given to not vote, especially by the young urban, is that since all politicians are corrupt voting is like choosing the best from the worst. Of course, you couldn’t grill them about this assumption for two reasons: first you believe it yourself and second you have no means to prove otherwise. Now you do, at least in the city of Mumbai and that means is called: www.MumbaiVotes.com.
The people behind www.MumbaiVotes.com have compiled a whooping amount of information on 915 politicians (including all of Mumbai’s MPs, MLAs, Corporators, and Election Candidates) over 3600 newspaper articles, scores of video interviews, election manifestos and legislative records. It has enough and more material on every politician standing for this years elections for you to make up your mind to vote. Or if it be that bad – to justify not voting.
That’s Vivek Gilani.
But before you start assuming that the portal intends to influence your decision in favour or against any candidate, its founder and political, environmental and social activist Vivek Gilani explains, “Whether a candidate is good or bad is a subjective judgement. We instead pursue objectivity and we merely seek to present to you what your elected candidate has done since s/he began the journey from candidate to Elected Representative.”
The generation before the advent of the internet, remember libraries, reference cards, and then, wait for a book i.e. wait for information. On the internet, the reference card has given way to a search box and the dead, one dimensional library has given way to digital texts, video and audio. It is total convergence. And both – its amazing application and effect – you can see in www.MumbaiVotes.com.
Go to the home page and use the map, search table or simply click on the photograph of your constituency’s MP to start exploring MumbaiVotes. Once on the ‘Results’ page, click on the name of the politician of interest and voila, there opens before you a Pandora’s box full of information with details of the politician (including landline and mobile numbers), his performance marks, articles on him, video and other details. All of these are available at the click of a button. The crispness, clarity and simplicity of it all, will simply bowl you over.
The greatest strength of the portal is however its analysis of politicians. All MPs, MLAs, Corporators and election candidates profiled in the portal, have been analyzed based on their performance in the context of their promises. Yes, one is bound to wonder about the methodology behind the same. This, developed by Vivek Gilani, an environmental engineer by profession, and a citizen rights and environmental activist, in conjunction with two PhDs in Media Studies and Civics & Indian Politics, is given on the site for anyone to check.
As a case in point, lets take the report card of three famous politicians: Govinda (film star truned politician), Priya Dutt (Film stars daughter turned politician) and Milind Deora (politicians son turned politician and no less than a film star in popularity being the youngest MP). Of the three, Govinda is the poorest. He has four red flags for attendance, two red flags for questions and debates and five red flags for Manifesto Promises Vs. Constituency Needs. If you were to consider him a school student and the different parameters as subjects, he’d fail with dying colours in all subjects often scoring less than 10 marks in most. Milind Deora and Priya Dutt, fare a little better. But even they do not come up all guns blazing. They fail in many subjects. Indeed, it is truly difficult to find one who at least passes in all.
ROCKSTAR CELEBRITIES AND/OR/BUT POLITICAL LOSERS?
The best thing about the site is that you can compare selected MPs. As an example, you can choose the candidates running for election from your area, tick them all and press the compare button and the flags show up i.e. their performance so far. You can easily choose the best from that, no more leaving you with an excuse not to vote.
And yet, before you begin accusing this of being a negative site, Vivek says, “Do look at the bigger picture too. There might be those who are performing exceptionally well but they would be marginalised within their party because of this very reason. While they had nothing to show earlier. Now they do. As an activist, you want to beat down a non-performing politician, MumbaiVotes will give you the fact. On the other hand, if you want to go the positive way and reward a performing one, MumbaiVotes will do that too. It’s totally up to you to use it.” We get the point: it is not just a record of politicians ineptitude but it can be a record of their brilliance as well. But our point is when we know that most politicians are inept anyways, it will de-facto become a record of their ineptitude. Ask Vivek this and he says, “That, then, is not the doing of MumbaiVotes.com. We are free, fair and unbiased in the truest sense. If a politician wants to have a good ranking, he better perform and the ranking will go up automatically.”
And that brings us to the weird bit about the portal, actually two weird bits. First is that despite its excruciating detail and massive database, it is absolutely free. And secondly, and this totally knocks one off, there is no advertisement or endorsement of any kind or type on the site. These factors, and the involvement of hundreds of volunteers who have given their time, efforts and even money, can perhaps justify it being called a grass root movement. Yet, whether you do call it one or not, you cannot deny two things: 1. The people concerned mean business. 2. They mean business so much, they are unwilling to jeopardise the movement by having sponsors give money and thus control what goes and what does not. These factors assure us of the veracity of the information in the site.
Yet, a venture like this would obviously require money. If for nothing than just for maintenance and hosting (considering the huge quantity of videos) and bandwidth (to go up with increasing number of hits). Mo Polamar, involved with the project as the Communication Panel Head, and also the JMD and founder of Palador Pictures (the company that brings to India venerable World Cinema Masterpieces), says, “The money come from the common masses. Whatever anyone wants to give, no matter how little, is welcome.”
There is a law that has been passed a few years back in the country, RTI, that empowers people to access any information from any government office. Eerily, MumbaiVotes seems just like that. And Mo Polamar rightly points out, “A democracy is a government that is for, of and by the people. This means, every piece of information should be public property. But it is not. The RTI act challenged this status quo and won. MumbaiVotes takes the spirit of RTI and contextualizes available data on our politicians and their promises. No longer can they shirk accountability because the account of their deeds and misdeeds is noted on MumbaiVotes.com for the world to see and to haunt them forever.”
There is no doubt that like with its extensive information, www.MumbaiVotes.com, as its Press Release suggests, becomes a must visit portal for political studies students, researchers, analysts, journalists, social activist and any awakened individual who wants to know and then to make a difference. Indeed, imagine what a journalist can do. He is passing by a road and sees that a road full of potholes. He knows the area and so he logs on to MumbaiVotes.com, checks out the constituency and the MP and corporator for it check out their numbers and call them straight. Even you, just as a citizen who wants to know what they are up to and want to call up Govinda, Milind Deora or Priya Dutt, go check out their mobile numbers on the site, and make the call.
One can imagine how political parties, baying for each others blood, would use the site too. When they need to sling mud at an opposing candidate or politician, they now know where to go and dig out all the dirt. And no matter who digs out the dirt, the winners are always the same: the common man of Mumbai and democracy in the country.
Hence, it is a real pity there isnt one say, DelhiVotes.com, or KolkataVotes.com, or Bangalore Votes.com, or ChennaiVotes.com. It would have been interesting if they were also available and that besides the 6 constituency under scanner, all the 500 plus constituencies of the country were so. But, they are not, and we have two choices, one is to look at the glass half empty, or as Vivek does, look at the mug full of water that can fill the rest of the glass: “MumbaiVotes.com took Five years of conceptualisation and adaptation, and over a year of collation of data, and hundreds of volunteers from all walks of life. And my intention was to show that this is possible. I did it for Mumbai since I AM from Mumbai. There is a template made now. It will be easier to replicate the model. Now let others take up the mantle for every little town and village in India. Let this be a national movement. Yes, it will take in time and it will take in resources. But I have no doubt, we have both. The only question to ask is, do we have the WILL.”
Do we, indeed?
