The Indian community of bloggers is large and growing. It has created several mechanisms through which new and noteworthy blogs can be discovered. The first is the Bharateeya Blog Mela in which, every week, a volunteer aggregates interesting posts of the week with commentary and links. The second is DesiPundit, a group blog devoted to performing the same role as Bharateeya Blog Mela, but on a 24/7 basis. Yet another initiative is the annual Indibloggies awards, given to most popular sites in various categories.
While the Indian blog community is large, many large holes remain in its coverage. For example, it lacks professional economists with experience in government and policy-making. In fact, it lacks professionals in many fields such as sociology, psychology, political science, and philosophy. Even in fields that have some representation (information technology, management, advertising, journalism, literary criticism), there is space for a lot more than we currently have.
So, here's the take-home message: If you have something interesting to say, don't just say it to your family and friends. Blog it. There's a whole world out there that could benefit from your incisive and insightful perspectives and expressive power.
4 Comments:
Abhi: I agree with your points. But would that not be obvious, given the slant in our education system towards engineering and medicine as careers as opposed to the other sociological sciences and the arts? The arts escape with some coverage, but even in these cases, it is cinema that garners the majority and again that is obvious too.
If you are talking about the lack of career economists or bankers who write, that is mainly due to the fact that we don't write much when we should, i.e, when we are learning. Our education system places a lot of emphasis on reading at the expense of creativity and works on the misplaced perception that creativity is a characteristic of the artistically inclined.
aNTi: I am not at all sure the reasons you cite are a factor here: there are tons of people studying to become economists, and linguists, and philosophers. I am sure there are lots of people with deep knowledge in their domain who can write well, articulate their thoughts, and help the rest of us understand their domains -- and our world -- better.
All I am saying in this post is that at this current state of India's blogdom, many of them are not participating in it. And, of course, that our blogdom will be richer if they come out and join us. Heck, I myself joined 'us' only 14 months ago!
Abhi: I think the desi blogosphere is rather overcrowded. But it is still early days. And like any other social trend, the growth rate will taper at one point and only the fittest and the best will survive. The key question is however this - Whether the better ones that we have now will last that long, since burn out seems to be very common among bloggers.
aNTi: Yes, the Indian subcontinent of the blogosphere is overcrowded -- but only in some segments: all-in-one type blogs, and those commenting on pop culture come to mind immediately. When it comes to specialized blogs in economics, sociology, etc. there aren't many, and there is certainly space for a lot more.
Whether many of the current crop of bloggers survive the burn-out disease is certainly an issue. However, as long as someone else comes along (and ours is a LARGE country!) to take their place, we don't really need to worry, do we?
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