NEW DELHI, India  - Traditionally, going village to village, city to city across the vast expanse of India is the way campaigning works in the world's largest democracy.

But the times are changing as the national political parties try to adapt to the Internet age to woo the country's 714 million potential voters.

"I must admit here that we were somewhat inspired by the use of information technology, Internet in particular, in the recent American presidential elections," said, Sudheendra Kulkarni, an e-campaign manager for the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), referring to the Obama campaign's use of the Internet.

And there's good reason. This year another 43 million people are eligible to vote – many of them young adults, and many of them more plugged into technology.

The BJP is pushing the technology envelope this year. It is using video phones, Google ads, cell phone text messages, YouTube, and social networking sites, such as Orkut and Facebook. The party also has a glossy Web site for its main candidate as prime minister.

Working behind the scenes are some of the very people the party is trying to attract.

Mallika Noorani is in her early 20s and left her job as a banker to volunteer for the BJP campaign.

"I work on average about 12 hours a day for not a penny. A complete 100 percent volunteer," Noorani said.

"I seized the opportunity to learn more but also to understand how exactly I could make a difference," she said.

"Because at the end of the day, you know you can't always blame someone else, you kind of have to hold yourself accountable as much you want to hold your politicians accountable."

Noorani is from Mumbai, where the terrorist attacks in 2008 triggered a rallying cry from the youth in particular to force government to take action and secure the country.

There is no doubt the campaigns have taken note of the clamor for change among young people.

"The youth vote acquires a greater importance for the simple reason that the largest segment of those who are going in voting on the polling booths.  That is why it is even more important," said Vishvjit P. Singh, e-campaign manager for India's National Congress Party - a longtime rival of the BJP.

At India's National Congress Party headquarters, they are working on their electronic campaign.

"We put up our Jai Ho ring tone on our Web site and you won't believe it– in the first two hours, we had 14,500 downloads," Singh said, referring to the theme song from the Oscar-winning movie "Slumdog Millionaire."

The National Congress Party also reworked the song with words to fit its campaign message.

But even in the Web world there is politics as usual. The National Congress Party, which offers information in three different languages, said its site was better for the common man in India and took a swipe at the BJP's site.

"It's got drop-down menus, it's got all kinds of navigation tricks, you know, which, is very, very good for a nerd, very good for a geek," e-campaign manager Singh said of the BJP site. "But how do you get a common man who is a young boy, who is just going into a cyber cafe, it will be very difficult for him to navigate."

Technology is making waves in the 2009 campaign, reaching tens of thousands of voters, but old-fashioned politics still reign supreme.

No one here believes Web sites will be the deciding factor this time around - but give it a few years and it just might click with millions more voters.

Especially the young and politically passionate, such as BJP volunteer Noorani.

"I am under no illusion. But I think it's the first step. We are reaching out, through the Web site, to 30,000 unique visitors a day."