How is Google helping the voters of India and Indonesia for the upcoming elections?

Google India recently announced that it has launched a new Elections hub, a series of election tools in an attempt to help the 600 million voters make the right choice. It’s already a known fact that 12 crore first-time voters hold key to 2014 Lok Sabha polls.

Sandeep Menon, Director Marketing at Google India, made the announcement in a blog post on Wednesday, saying the India election hub is now live for anyone to visit.

With Internet users increasing tremendously over past few years, it has become one of the major sources for information, communication and feedback for the people of the country. Google precisely uses this fact to help the people choose likeminded leader.

So what’s in the Election Hub and how can one use it?

• The Pledge To Vote Campaign: The election hub currently has a campaign called “Pledge to vote campaign” which is up and running. Users can pledge to vote and also say a why they should vote. Using Google Map’s, Users can also view why other fellow users across the nation are pledging to vote.

As a part of the campaign Google made a beautiful video with Mr. Shyam Saran Negi, India’s first Independent voter.

Google Plans to boost this campaign with the of celebrity pledge, where actors like Amitabh Bachchan, Dia Mirza, Arjun Rampal and Sakshi Tanwar appear in a YouTube video to give their reasons for voting.

• Google Score: Google Score tool reflects search activity against a person’s name in the everyday across both Google Search and YouTube. Google will be displaying the five politicians with the highest Google score from the previous day, every day on the Trends page in the Election hub. This way, user can get a quick insight into how trends have been shifting. The election hub also features new search trend infographics, such as most searched for Chief Ministers and regional parties.

The BJP prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi leads the score, followed by Arvind Kejriwal, the leader of the AAP. The current prime minister, Manmohan Singh, was third, followed by the Congress Party vice president, Rahul Gandhi, and the chief minister of Tamil Nadu, Jayalalithaa, in fifth place.

• Google Hangouts: Google has rolled out a series of Hangouts on Air with India’s politicians. The main purpose of this is to improve the interaction between leaders and citizens. The scheduled hangouts include the Minister of Rural Development Jairam Ramesh (on March 27), the Chief Minister of Madhya Pradesh Shivraj Singh Chauhan (on March 29) and former Sports Minister Ajay Maken (on March 30).

Given the fact that the majority of the population still doesn’t have a computer, Google has a plan B for this. People can call 08800484848 to listen in on Hangouts.

This initiative deserves a great praise for gathering a large amount of information around the elections in one place to help the people make the right choice and build a better nation. Hats off Google! You really know how to use technology for pushing the human race forward.

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