The Trouble with Indian Bloggers

Last updated on: March 1, 2009 at 2:46 am by Desh Kapoor

The Trouble with Indian Bloggers 2009-03-01T02:46:57-06:00 Desh Kapoor

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I have a big list of RSS feeds on my Google Reader running into well over hundred. Now, i don’t read all of them, but I do read some regularly. For some reason, I have very few blogs from Indian bloggers! And that I thought was surprising given that my blog is so overwhelmingly India-oriented (or South Asia oriented). I have been asking myself…. WHY?

In fact, a friend asked me to go over to other bloggers in my niche to check where they are doing well, and what they are publishing that I am not looking at. For, I can see, that most of the known bloggers from India do get a lot of traffic and also comments. I do get a substantial traffic but not as many comments.

When I started blogging, I got inspired by Atany Dey and his blogs at Deeshaa. He has extremely excellent analysis and it is original. All that he writes is HIS viewpoint. He does not copy-paste and just include a comment to a picture and get “away with it”. He is one who will say things that ONLY he can write. So, as I used to say when I was starting out “I want to be an Atanu Dey when I grow up as a blogger!”.

The rest – including the most hyped – are simply pedestrian in my view. Most of the bloggers fall in one of the two main categories:

1. Copy-Paste Artists: I think India Uncut is probably the most prominent exponent of this art of blogging. Most of his blogs are 75% copied content and rest is a comment on that. Yes, he is witty but is that what we are looking for? To me, copying and commenting is not necessarily where the bloggers should go towards. Incidentally, that’s is where I started. It was easy and cheap on time. But intellectually it was very defeating. I gave NOTHING unique to my readers. It was simply a brief comment here or there and blog was a refurbished nonsense. I consciously made a decision a couple of years back to STOP that. No matter how difficult it may be, but I will write things on my own. Yes, I will refer to other’s content.. but not an the MAIN content of my blog post.. but as a means of support! MY ANALYSIS or THOUGHTS will be the MAIN BODY of my blog post

I am not sure if that has helped my readers, but that I believe is what blogging SHOULD be about.

2. Opinionated Rants: Now this is another way of writing for many. There is this Krishworld and many others. They are generally liberal and have a pseudo-secular bias which is so obvious and strong that it becomes nauseating. IN fact this guy, Krish, has been so rabid that he will even delete any comments criticizing him or his thoughts. And that holds true of many. In this genre of blogging, the content remains so focused on religion and cultural orientation and, the rants show a level of shallow viewpoint that I don’t like personally.

There is never a sense in these bloggers to think carefully. It betrays the same “15 second” analysis that the folks who started the “Pink Chaddi” campaign showed. No long term thinking but just ranting and raving mind.

Maybe its just me and I am sure many would say its from one who is just jealous, but where should blogging in the Indian blogosphere move towards? Where do you see blogs going to in the next 10 years?

I personally feel that Indian media has become rather shallow over the years. For me, the gold standard of news discussion is National Public Radio – balanced, intelligent and SUPERB coverage and analysis! I believe there is a STRONG need in the Indian media for an “NPR”. And that kind of discussion media can ONLY come from the blogging world. I therefore think that the future of Indian media now lies in how blogs will overshadow newspapers…

.. and if that be so then how can blogging keep going on by copying-pasting or writing just for stoke controversies?

And here – I really want your comments on how should the blogging evolve in the Indian blogosphere?

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