Empowering India is a website by Liberty Institute, India. They collect and compile information about candidates contesting elections and present them at their website. Their blog is here.
I have a few suggestions for them and others interested in this:
- Look at Sunlight Foundation for inspiration.
- Make some kind of query API available.
- Create widgets that users can add to their blog, Facebook or any other social networking page. It can show information like how many crorepati contestants are in a 50km radius :) Or maybe a map of India plotting “criminal complaint density”.
- Make this available in other languages, at least Hindi. Google’s AJAX Language API is a good starting point.
- I know the above require manpower. As an alternative, make the compiled databases publicly available. You can simply provide a database dump, or upload it to an online database like Dabble DB. There are web developers (maybe me) out there who can use this information, analyze this and make a richer presentation.
- Not very important, but get a modern look and feel.
Hat Tip: Shantanu’s blog
Eternally Dissatisfied 