My first chain letter

Today I sent out my first ever chain letter about ElectionTracker to all my friends. I am posting the letter here below. If you have not yet received it, you can copy the text from here and mail it to your friends. Spread the word! 

Fellow citizens of India,

* When was the last time you told the world what a wonderful MP you have? 
* When was the last time you congratulated a politician for his creative use of the tax payer's money?
* When was the last time you shouted from every roof top about how much you agree with the ideology of XYZ party? 
* When was the last time you cheered with your friends that your favourite party had stocked its candidate list with people with rap sheets longer than your... er... arm?
* When was the last time you let your favourite candidate know that you would give them your vote just like you had voted for their parents and grandparents before them?
* When was the last time you thanked our politicians for handing out liquor to people in their constituency or money to buy previously mentioned liquor? [Some would argue that you have to be drunk to actually vote].

If you answered NEVER to the above questions, I am truly shocked. The only reason I can think why you would be silent is that you thought no one cared. That your applause would get drowned in the din of traffic, that your words would melt away in the ether, that in a country of one billion, there was no one actually listening.

And that's where youd be wrong. You'll be glad to know that ElectionTracker (http://electiontracker.germinait.com) does care and is listening. Listening, scoring and then reporting on what people like you have to say about their netas and wannabe netas. ElectionTracker gathers opinions from a variety of sources and then churns these opinions through Artificial Intelligence algorithms that detect their relevance, topic and sentiment, and finally displays the results in the form of pretty (and intuitive) graphs.

If you want your opinion to be listened to, send it in an email to

myvoice.electiontracker@germinait.com with the words "My Voice from ABC" in the subject where ABC is your location. We promise that we will not display your email address anywhere, nor spam you, nor share your email address with anyone (however much they plead). Alternatively, you can visit http://electiontracker.germinait.com and click on "My Voice" to share your opinion. 

Apart from opinions collected from individuals, ElectionTracker crawls all the online news sites and blogs for content relating to the Indian elections. If you have your own blog that you think we are not crawling, please do let us know by visiting http://electiontracker.germinait.com and clicking on "Submit Source".

Just so that you know, we are not affiliated with any party nor do we love one more than the other. We love them all with equal passion. I only mentioned praise in this letter because it was inconceivable to me that anyone would feel any emotion other than adoration for our beloved netas. That said, ElectionTracker will record, analyse and display negative opinions too.

I will conclude in the vein of all well written chain mails:
1. Please forward this message to at least 10 friends to ensure that your friends also know that their opinions count. Also please make sure you share your own opinion by emailing myvoice.electiontracker@germinait.com with the words "My Voice from ABC" in the subject, where ABC is your location.
2. Rohit from Jaipur did not forward this message to anyone. As a result, his friends who received this from others realized how uncool Rohit was for not receiving the message. When Rohit convinced them that in fact he had received this email before they had, they branded him as "uncaring". Soon Rohit became the town pariah. His milkman and newspaperboy decided that such a person did not deserve to vote and so stole poor Rohit's voter id card.
3. The candidates from the constituency of Rampur (name changed) did not receive any opinions about them. They felt so unmotivated that they dropped out of the race and instead filed nomination papers in the name of the peepal tree (which everyone loves and some have even married).
4. Jency from Kottayam forwarded this message to all her friends on Facebook and Orkut and MySpace and Hi5 and... and even her old-fashioned email addressbook. Now all her friends on Facebook/Orkut/MySpace/Hi5/... think she's the cat's meow, and have voted her "Most likely to forward a brilliant chain mail". 

So friends be like Jency and not like Rohit. And don't let your constituency go the way of Rampur. Spread the word and share your voice with us. 

We're listening,


Ranjit Nair
http://electiontracker.germinait.com