Is politics entering the blogging arena?

We had just about managed to get over the celebrity blog fanfare, when the media zeroed in on another blog… and this time it was Lalu Yadav. The blog too, on its part started on a fiery note. Commenting on the Gujjar agitation, where he squarely blamed Vasundhara Raje for the loss that railways suffered. The papers and all other news channel carried the story as if it was the biggest event in the world.

After the matter subsided, I was curious to see how Lalu’s blog was faring and hence I hit the road on mission ‘Lalu blog hunting’ –going obviously the google way! To start off with, it was a little difficult to hunt the blog. Next, when I hit the hyperlink to my dismay I was greeted with a ‘down for updation’ page. This had nothing to do with Lalu I believe. I think he should have picked a better platform for blogging or if getting Lalu to create a blog was a marketing gimmick on the part of www.popcorn.com, they should have atleast had some state of art technology that need not be updated in such a crude manner.

However I stumbled upon an article in the economic times with insights on the state of Lalus blog and I must say it was hilarious! People had actually turned his blog into a railway complaint box. Well, what can I say? Had he stuck to the topic he knows best, handling railways, probably his blog would have served a better purpose and would have been much more meaningful than ending up as a sloppy political tool used to strike back at opponents.

This made me realize the effects if all our politicians go the blogging way -


The politicians would publish individual videos or vlogs, that address the nation

The morning ‘Parliament session’ would be off air. Instead it would be converted into podcats and distributed across internet.

Their comments section would be filled with blame and retaliation against each other.

The common man on the other hand would be able to post complaints on the blogs.

These piling complaints would then be aired on the news channel that would make a story on how inefficient our politicians are even in this internet age.

The NSO rankings on search engine would be aired on channels the way stock prices are shown. This would determine the popularity of the politicians

In the election season, online polls would be run on individual blogs to gauge the politicians popularity and check what people want in terms of roti, kapada makan so that politicians can continue to podcast their address with those promises.

The public at large would still be at the same point – viewing the blog story on news channel and wondering how does it help them ! :)