Tuesday, July 1, 2008

How Indian bloggers change the way world thinks about India

India, for long was relegated to the status of a third world nation. Try as you might, year after year it was the same perception. Poverty, pity, snakes, jungles, curry and what not.

Somewhere along the way, the IT revolution, outsourcing, offshoring, IT service providers, Y2K happened and India and Indians slowly moved from the "Wheres India..." to "India has good programmers...".

BRIC, (Brazil, Russia, India, China), the ultimate acronym has lifted India beyond the orbit of India being constantly being referred to as a suffix or prefix with its friendly neighbour. With the growth in outsourcing and its economy, India is touted as a growth engine, emerging economy and a must have in any companys strategy. From good programmers, India now has a "growth economy" as well.

Because of these two factors India is slowly moving up in the eyes of the India watcher and slowly showing up in the radars of businessmen, industry, researchers and universities for whom it was hitherto invisible (or with low visibility).

There is a third level which is contributing significantly to India moving up the proverbial value chain. This, imho, is thanks to the blogging space. Blogging and bloggers are the creators, if you will, of the zeitgeist of the web today which in turn shape the perceptions and world of tomorrow. Most serious bloggers are usually economists, professors,journalists, students, venture capitalists (who I call the "idea drivers of tomorrow") with opinions, insights, contributions, research all or some of which flow into shaping up tomorrow.

Indian bloggers today contribute significantly in determining the way India is perceived tomorrow. Indian bloggers are slowly reinforcing through the blogging community about the depth of India and how it is much more than an army of coders. Indian bloggers contribute and host many a carnival(bhartiya blog mela), many a collobrative blog and write on subjects ranging from education to science to brands to technology to management to analysis to writing and youth.

If Brand India emerges more as an intellectual superpower tomorrow, we Bloggers can claim our two cents of contribution to it.

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