Tell HN: Local politicians and Web in India

When we started with a small startup basically dealing with brand ratings. We received a call from a PR agent. He said he was excited about our idea (we had discussed this with him in a casual chat) and he has an investor for us. We were a bit surprised because we had not even done a proof of concept yet. We had a call with the so called investor. He turned out to be a local goon turned politician. His proposal was simple. Build something that will promote him and his party as savior of the people and bash everyone else. Create spam on his competitors pages and websites. Money is no constraint he said take as much as you want. However if you don't accept this work, since I already know your idea I will get it implemented from someone before you do.

We refused saying that is not the way geeks really work.

Since then I have been meeting many people who tell me how the local politicians are asking to do such things and if they don't comply threaten to create existential problems before the business.

A politician wanted a certain book to be falsely promoted as best seller on the homepage. Someone wanted to create hundreds of fake twitter users and make some ridiculous things trend on twitter and so on.

It is hard to get funding of even INR 5 million for a legitimate project but these people are easily ready to shell out even INR 10 million for such things.