Google's 'Know Your Candidates Tool' for India's Lok Sabha 2014 Elections.

Bangalore South Constituency Contestants, Lok Sabha 2014 

oogle's engineers have created an interesting interactive web site of India's 2014 Lok Sabha elections.

In the Bangalore South constituency, where Nandan Nilekani, former chief of the Unique Identification Authority of India, is one of the contestants, there are 21 others. 22 people in all for 1 single Lok Sabha seat. (In other words, the 'best' of these 22 contents will get elected to the lower house of the parliament.

Nandan Nilekani, Lok Sabha 2014

This is a very useful tool because, while sitting at your desk, you can derive a whole lot of information about each of these candidates. For example, for Nandan Nilekani, you can see the information as show in the right snippet. The snippet contains 6 Internet-related handles and URLs that can provide plenty of information about each candidate. One particular web site, http://www.myneta.info, compiled by Association for Democratic Reforms, appears to be very comprehensive. (As you would expect, however, the web site also has a disclaimer about the accuracy of the curated information).

One important take-away for me, from where I am in the United States, is that it probably is very difficult for undesirable elements to enter, and succeed, in Indian politics.

Vive la démocratie!