What started as a hobby for a bunch of geeks has now become a powerful, unified voice of the people that matter: the youth of India. The Indian blogger stands guard: coordinating relief efforts and sharing information on disasters; ensuring that the mainstream media takes notice of serious issues like Manjunath’s murder and suppression of free speech by Mr. Pony Tail or the Slimes. I wanted to use the title ‘Memorable moments’ but stopped myself. It is not memorable when hundreds of thousands of people die and we bloggers report about the catastrophe from the forefront. It is not memorable when you have to report the death of an honest, righteous young man at the hands of the corrupt.
Here’s a list of the significant moments of the Indian Blogosphere in 2005 (this is a work-in-progress. leave a comment if you want me to add more to this list):
- The South-east Asian Tsunami: We were there where the mainstream media did not dare to step in.
- Manjunath: we wake up the mainstream media to this horrible crime. And now, the President assures us that the honest will be protected.
- Bloggers coordinate relief for the Mumbai deluge.
- We rise to protect Gaurav and Rashmi. We kick a$$.
- One of the fake-questions that they wanted the MPs to ask “Is it true that while NRI firms such as India Uncut of USA, Sepia Mutiny of Britain and AnarCap Lib of Netherlands have been allowed to invest in Indian SSIs, the reputed German investment firm Desipundit has been denied permission? If so, the reasons thereof? Is the Union Government of India planning to make automatic the long procedure of permission for SSIs to import new technologies such as Trackbacks, Pingbacks, Blogrolls, Splogs and Hitcounters?” Need I say more? We are a piece of the Indian political history now.
- Last but not the least, we decide to give the Slimes a hard time after it tries to strong-arm Mediaah. Did we succeed? Ask Google! Update: Slimes rubs the Delhi bloggers on then wrong side. Again.
- Update:The Rohan Pinto episode is a significant chapter in the history of plagiarism on the web. It highlighted the fact that it is not easy anymore to steal someone’s work. Here’s Amit’s take on the issue. Bloggers caught the MSM stealing reviews and stories. Burp!
Important links:
Tsunami: http://tsunamihelp.blogspot.com
Earthquake Help: http://quakehelp.blogspot.com/
Manjunath’s murder: http://manjunathshanmugam.blogspot.com/
Mumbai Rains: http://cloudburstmumbai.blogspot.com/ and http://mumbaihelp.blogspot.com/
IIPM Controversy: http://www.desipundit.com/2005/10/08/lies-damned-lies-and-fake-blogs/
Operation Duryodhana: http://www.cobrapost.com/documents/one.htm
Pradyuman is threatened: http://www.ojr.org/ojr/stories/050315glaser/ and http://mediaah.blogspot.com/2005/03/operation-intimidation-media-biggie.html
Please leave a comment if I had missed out on something.
