Indian students in US launch website on Lok Sabha election

New York:  A group of Indian students in New York have created a website to track the upcoming general elections, promising to provide a comprehensive and "no high-brow and jargon-led" reportage of the event. The website, thefivefortyfive.com, is the brainchild of six students from Columbia School of Journalism. The name is derived from the number of seats in India's Lok Sabha though the website does explain a technicality: "some might say 543, but the President can nominate two members." Launched this week, the website's sole focus is on Indian elections but the sampling is diverse - from Rahul Gandhi's crumpled Kurtas to statistics going back to 1952. Inspired by the popular US political analyst Nate Silver's fivethirtyeight.com and the hot social website Buzzfeed, it delivers tightly edited and innovative content. Anand Katakam, Devjyot Ghoshal, Iva Dixit, Indrani Basu, Rishi Iyengar and Aparna Alluri are the names behind the distinct initiative. Mr Katakam says the idea emerged while brainstorming in a classroom about gaps in the Indian media. "No one is doing single news websites, and we were exposed to lots of ideas during the course of the year. We were also inspired by 'Syria Deeply' and Nate Silver's incredible work," he said. A key mentor was Emily Bell, former Director of Digital at Guardian, now heading Columbia's Digital Center for Journalism. "She was taken aback to hear that no one is doing data in India, or stuff that is specifically built for the Web. Though she did question how we have the time to do this, and whether we are working hard enough at Journalism School," said Mr Ghoshal with a grin. The defining direction was a way the new generation consumes news, through Facebook and Twitter, and the team has built a platform that can be shared in multiple ways. The initial response has been "incredible" says the team. "We thought we might get 100 followers on Twitter and would be asking our parents to check the website, but this has been fantastic. Our request to all readers is please take a look and contribute, though unfortunately we can't pay you right now," said Mr Katakam. But if the reception foreshadows the future, the latter certainly looks to change soon. NDTV