Modi, Gandhi use Obama-style tactics to reach India's modern voters
Policital organisers vie to reach a young, urban and upwardly mobile population with modern methods made famous by Barack Obama
One recent Sunday morning, volunteers for India's main opposition party fanned out through a middle-class apartment building in the capital. They knocked on doors, guided by the most sophisticated set of analytical voter data that India had ever seen.
"Are you on Facebook? Twitter? Do you use WhatsApp ? … We would like to send out some political jokes, Modi messages and videos. Can you post and circulate them among your friends?" asked Mahavir Mittal, 45, a shoe box manufacturer.
Starting yesterday, millions of voters head to the polls in an election that could oust the party that has dominated India's politics for decades and show they want to move beyond traditional priorities such as caste and religion to focus on government corruption and the economy.
India's electorate is starkly different today compared with a decade ago, when Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's first coalition government came to power. About two-thirds of the population is younger than 35. Voters are more urban and connected than ever before, and per capita income has risen . Upwardly mobile urbanites make up about one-third of the electorate.
Watch: Indian voters kick off world's biggest election
