Democracy faces the algorithm

INDIAN democracy has always been noisy, vibrant and fiercely contested. But over the past decade, its battleground has shifted — from rallies and street corners to screens and servers. As the country moves deeper into a digital era, politics itself is being rewired. Data, algorithms and artificial intelligence now shape not only how parties campaign, but also how citizens think, react and vote.

India has around 806 million internet users, and a large proportion of them are young — a reflection of the country’s low median age and its digitally native generation. Every political party understands this transformation. Political messaging once disseminated by party cadres and pamphlets now depends on social-media influencers, WhatsApp groups, AI-driven analytics and micro-targeted exercises. The smartphone has become the new constituency office, and every voter is now both a consumer and a data point.

This technological shift has made politics more efficient and more personalised — but also more prone to manipulation. The crucial question is no longer how digital India votes, but whether digitalisation is deepening democracy by empowering voters or simply refining political control and making manipulation easier. In every election cycle, parties across the spectrum now invest heavily in digital operations. Dedicated IT cells monitor voter sentiment, analyse trends and craft narratives calibrated for each demographic. Political messaging is increasingly driven by real-time data — from social-media engagement patterns to voter profiling using publicly available information and third-party databases. Artificial-intelligence tools can now segment audiences with remarkable precision: young first-time voters in urban areas, for instance, might be shown inspirational videos about entrepreneurship and innovation, while rural voters receive targeted messages about welfare schemes and subsidies.

Digital outreach played a prominent role in India’s 2019 general election, often referred to as the country’s first “WhatsApp election” for its scale of online communication. Since then, artificial intelligence and automation have deepened this trend, with chatbots and AI-generated content increasingly used in campaigns — a reminder that technology often evolves faster than regulation. Sophisticated data analytics can now predict not just who might vote, but how to make them feel motivated to.

In many ways, technology has democratised access to politics. Regional parties and independent candidates can use digital tools to reach audiences once monopolised by national machines. The Election Commission’s own digital innovations — such as online voter registration and transparency portals — have made participation easier. Social media has amplified public debate, given voice to marginalised communities and allowed young citizens to question authority directly.

Yet this same technology also carries the seeds of democratic distortion. Digital politics thrives on the currency of attention — and attention, as every platform algorithm knows, is maximised by emotion. Outrage, fear and identity-based appeals spread faster than policy detail or reasoned debate. As parties learn to weaponise this logic, political competition risks turning into a contest of narratives rather than ideas.

For young voters — about 21.7 crore (217 million) Indians aged 18 to 29, roughly one-fifth of the country’s 99.1-crore electorate (Election Commission, January 2025) — this presents both opportunity and vulnerability. They are the most connected generation in India’s history but also the most exposed to curated information ecosystems. Many receive their political education not from textbooks or newspapers, but from short videos, memes and influencers whose funding and affiliations are often opaque. Echo chambers reinforce biases, misinformation circulates unchecked, and the line between civic engagement and digital manipulation blurs.

A Reuters Institute Digital News Report (2024) noted that India is among the countries most vulnerable to misinformation, with concern particularly high about false or misleading content shared on social platforms. Artificial intelligence has made such content easier to fabricate and harder to detect. The challenge, therefore, is not that politics has gone digital, but that democracy itself risks becoming turned into a game. When every click is a campaign insight and every post a potential vote, political discourse can easily slip from deliberation to data extraction.

Behind every targeted political advertisement lies a trove of personal data — much of it collected without informed consent. In India, the lines between party databases, commercial data brokers and government programmes are often blurred. Voter profiling can draw on phone numbers linked to welfare schemes, Aadhaar registrations or app downloads.

The Digital Personal Data Protection Act (2023) provides a legal framework for privacy, yet commentators have noted that its exemptions and “reasonable purpose” clauses, along with uncertain enforcement, leave significant grey areas — particularly when political parties are both collectors and beneficiaries of data. Unlike the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation, India’s law offers limited transparency requirements for data used in political campaigning. The Election Commission’s model code of conduct is yet to keep pace with algorithmic campaigning or targeted online advertising.

This lack of transparency undermines both privacy and fairness. Citizens have no clear way of knowing why they are being targeted with specific content, what data were used to do so, or how these data are stored. Political advertising on social media is often unlabelled, making it difficult to distinguish paid messaging from genuine support. The civic consequence is profound: informed consent, a cornerstone of both democracy and data ethics, is becoming harder to define. Political persuasion, once grounded in public debate, increasingly happens in private, data-driven silos invisible to scrutiny.

Technology itself is not the villain of this story. When used ethically, digital tools can expand participation, improve transparency and engage young citizens who might otherwise tune out of politics altogether. The challenge is governance — ensuring that innovation strengthens democracy rather than subverting it. Political advertising must become transparent and traceable. Every paid digital message should carry a disclosure of its sponsor, cost and targeting parameters, much like print or television ads. Social-media companies should be legally required to maintain publicly searchable archives of political content and its reach.

Citizens, too, need stronger data-protection rights. Political parties should be subject to the same privacy obligations as corporations, with independent oversight of how electoral data are collected, shared and stored. The Election Commission could establish a dedicated digital-ethics division to monitor algorithmic campaigning and ensure compliance with privacy standards. India also needs a large-scale investment in digital civic literacy. Teaching young voters how to verify information, recognise manipulation and understand data rights is as important as teaching them how to cast their vote. Civil society, educational institutions and technology companies must collaborate on programmes that build critical thinking and responsible participation in the online public sphere.

Ultimately, political leaders themselves must set the tone. Ethical use of technology cannot be legislated alone; it requires a culture of democratic restraint. The temptation to treat voters as data rather than citizens is immense, but resisting it is the real test of leadership in a digital democracy. 

India’s democratic project has survived poverty, diversity and dissent. Its next challenge is to survive the algorithm. The country’s digital transformation has created unprecedented possibilities for engagement but also unprecedented risks of manipulation. The tools that empower citizens can just as easily entrench political machines. The future of Indian democracy will not be decided only in Parliament or on the campaign trail, but also in the code, servers and screens through which politics now flows. As India’s young voters log in, scroll and swipe their way through the next election, the real question remains: who is shaping whom — the people, or the algorithms that study them?