The Best Online Sources for News and Analysis on the 2009 Indian Lok Sabha Elections · Global Voices
Gaurav Mishra

As the campaigns for the 2009 Indian Lok Sabha elections heat up, several new websites are aiming to become the default source of news and analysis related the 2009 general elections.
These websites, however, are directly competing with election microsites from mainstream media — Hindustan Times/ Google, TOI, Mint, DNA, The Hindu, Yahoo!, MSN, Rediff, NDTV, IBN Live, India Today, The Week, Economic Times, India TV, Aaj Tak, Business Standard, BBC and Al Jajeera– and need to offer something different to be useful.
All the mainstream media election microsites have similar features: details about parties, constituencies, candidates and manifestos, statistics about previous elections, and an overload of news and opinion related to the 2009 Lok Sabha elections. However, some microsites have unique features which stand out, so let me start by pointing to my favorite, often interactive, features on the mainstream media websites.
DNA, India Today, Business Standard and IBN Politics have user friendly pages for columns by some very well-known writers.
The Hindustan Times/ Google election microsite is based on Google gadgets which allows you to add individual features to your iGoogle page.
The WordPress-based Hindu Election Blog allows you to subscribe to specific tags and categories.
MSN has a useful news aggregator which allows to you find news by candidate, party, or state.
The Outlook India Election Blog is doing a great curation role by linking to important stories from elsewhere.
Of the new players, IndiPepal is perhaps the most ambitious, with blogs from several well-known analysts.
India Voting and Engage Voter also have content rich websites with some interesting features.
BlogAdda has a very well designed social media aggregator for the elections, which collates photos, videos, and posts from election-focused blogs.
OneVote also has a well designed social media aggregator that collates photos, videos, tweets, blog posts and news reports related to the India elections.
Vote Report India, a collaborative citizen-driven election monitoring platform for the 2009 elections, aims to aggregate direct reports about irregularities in the election process with news reports, blog posts, photos, videos and tweets related to the elections from all relevant sources, in one place, on an interactive map (see our earlier post for details).
With a wide variety of sources vying with each other, election-watchers in India and elsewhere are sure to find a source that fits their specific news and opinion needs.
Which are some of your favorite online sources for news and analysis on the 2009 Indian Lok Sabha Elections?