There are some 30 million young voting age citizens of India on Orkut and other social networking sites. Linkedin/MySpace and even Facebook are marginal blips in the popular Indian Internet scene. Compared to fan groups of popular music directors and cricketers the indian political groups on orkut happen to really tiny and community engagement levels are really low or discussions do not have much depth. Most of the young citizens from educated classes either do not vote at all( most haven't even registered themselves as voters) or have pitifully low attention span for politics.
So is there a huge audience for such a site ? Sure there is a possible audience of 30-40 million young voters.

Is it possible to sell a political platform to existing popular political parties ? Political parties in India haven't been known to pay for any technology except for un-solicited SMS'es and un-solicited voice spam. From my personal experience, some of the party organizations can be really corrupt with each decision maker marking up price of your services at next level until it reaches a political party's 'high command'. So you can't sell the services or give them for free with an agreement to monetize it on their behalf very easily. The existing political parties are all too corrupt for their own good.
Can emerging educated class parties/groups in India buy into it? Most of these parties are from people with IT background or friends in IT. Most haven't gone beyond rudimentary shared hosting sites and haven't created enough engagement to need to scale up their platforms as yet.

changeindia.in
jago.in
lok-paritran.org

So according to me the marketplace for political platforms doesn't exist today. You can't really offer say a USD100/mo(+usage) hosted social web political platform to rich politicians who would buy it online. Internet using politicians do not yet exist in India, the cost of making such sales to dinosaurs is simply too high as of today.

Whether the delimitation of constituencies in favor of urban areas is going to change this in a significant way is still to be played out in next 2 general elections over next 6 years or so,

I am not a lawyer applies here:-

A few points not raised by the media every time some indian citizen gets incarcerated because of overzealous actions of law enforcement, social pressure groups based on sectarian interests, political parties, religious fundamentalists and where the companies in telecom, ISP or Web space cooperate sometimes not even following the due process of law.

1. Under section 78 of IT act 2000 http://www.mit.gov.in/download/itbill2000.pdf , offenses under this act must not be investigated by an officer below the rank of a Deputy Superintendent of Police. Does the police comply with it ?

2. Can the indian police legally seek private and confidential information from any company ? There is no such mention in the IT act of any such search, confistication and discovery of ‘non-public’ information in a non-public place by the police. The powers for discovery if any lie with the Cyber Appellate Tribunal ( or maybe the courts, high court and above) ?

3. Wouldn't this kind of sharing be in violation of section 72 of IT act dealing with breach of confidentiality and privacy. If the IP address of the subscriber isn’t public information can it be disclosed to the police without any discovery order by a competent judicial authority ? Is the due process of law being followed by companies in sharing information with the law enforcement agencies who may not have any authority to seek information before they have obtained a judicial order.

4. Section 67 reads something like this: “Whoever publishes or transmits or causes to be published in the electronic form, any material which is lascivious or appeal to the prurient interest or if its effect is such as to tend to deprave and corrupt persons who are likely, having regard to all relevant circumstances, to read, see or hear the matter contained or embodied in it”

Its quite debatable whether the section 67 can and should be applied to every speech online where some special interest pressure group gets offended.

<quote>
Leader of the Opposition in the Legislative Council H K Patil has urged President Pratibha Patil to take the opinion of the Supreme Court on whether Artificially Created Light Energy (ACLE) can be considered as goods or not, so that tax can be levied on companies using this energy.
</quote>
ISPs asked to pay tax
Legislative council in an indian state is not a popularly elected body.

Reading through some newspapers letters to the editor, I could see a lot of generally well meaning middle class folks protesting against the salary hikes the elected representatives gave themselves.

MPs to get salary hike: Bill introduced
<quote>
The Bill sought to increase slaries of MPs from Rs 12,000 to Rs 16,000 besides raising the daily allowance to Rs 1,000 from Rs 500, Dasmunsi said.
</quote>

Yes many in middle class of India actually believe that todays politicians in India are all crooks and don't deserve to be paid a single naya paisa as salary not to mention the meager long overdue hike they gave themselves. But the current breed of politicians is the effect of low salaries we have in effect. It is well known IT industry in India has filched the best talent due to decent salaries it pays. Right now only the corrupt politician can survive the expenses of politicking and being out of office without a decent salary package. Not to forget we get what we pay for.

In my not so humble opinion they pay themselves ridiculously low salaries. Since the President of the republic is supposed to have highest salary in this whole hierarchy here is what I would propose as salaries (Tax-Free).

Annual Salaries
1. President of India: 1 Crore(10Million Rupees)
2. MP( Member of Parliament): 50 L (5 Million Rupees)
3. MLA(Member of Legislative Assembly):24L (2.4 Million Rupees)
4. Municipal Corporaters(Metros): 12L (1.2 Million Rupees)
5. Municipal Corporaters(2nd rung towns): 6L (600,000 Rupees)
6. Municipal Corporaters(small towns): 3L (300,000 Rupees)
7. Village Panchayat Members: 1.5L (150,000 Rupees)

Pension for next 5 years after they are no longer elected representatives:
1. MP( Member of Parliament): 25 L (2.5 Million Rupees)
2. MLA(Member of Legislative Assembly):12L (1.2 Million Rupees)
3. Municipal Corporaters(Metros): 6L (600,000 Rupees)
4. Municipal Corporaters(2nd rung towns): 3L (300,000 Rupees)
5. Municipal Corporaters(small towns): 2L (200,000 Rupees)
6. Village Panchayat Members: 1L (100,000 Rupees)

An additional 25% performance bonus based on ratings provided by the electors in a representatives constituency might just provide sufficient incentive to perform on measurable parameters.
These kind of salaries might even induce politicians to shun small amounts of money as bribes.

Apart from this state funding of elections can also go a long way in reducing corruption.
Proposed Funding for elections can be made available in the form of reimbursement of actual expenses of top 3 candidates to upper limit of:-
1. Parliament Elections: 50L(5Million Rupees)
2. State Legislatures: 15L (1.5 Million Rupees)
3. Municipal Elections(Metro): 5L ( 500,000 Rupees)
4. Municipal Election(2nd rung towns): 2L (200,000 Rupees)
5. Municipal Election(Small towns): 1L (100,000 Rupees)
6. Village Panchayat Elections: 25K (25000 Rupees)
and for next 2 candidates:-
1. Parliament Elections: 10L (1Million Rupees)
2. State Legislatures: 3L (300,000 Rupees)
3. Municipal Elections(Metro): 2L (200,000 Rupees)
4. Municipal Election(2nd rung towns): 50K(50000 Rupees)

An environment where representatives focus on governance and don't have to worry about arranging funds for the next election and don't have to worry about living in penury(that would actually be the case if they were honest ) after they are out of elected office might actually result in students aspiring for a political career as a respectable and honourable career option.

However bad our politicians are they are accountable to us even today, as opposed to the bureaucrats who while being relatively honest are generally slothful and inefficient and standing in the way our progress.