When the world is busy blogging, can Jharkhand stay far behind? While edublogs and klogs (knowledge blogs) keep bloggers glued to their machines, the state is also taking its blogging seriously — from online protests and discussion forums to Urdu poetry — the Jharkhand blogger does it all with elan.

Sarsij Nayanam (25), a software engineer from Ranchi currently placed in Bangalore, says, “Though there are few active bloggers in Jharkhand, the count is definitely growing.” He maintains five blogs (http://my.opera.com/sarsij) and also formed PetitionOnline.com — a forum which gained popularity during the anti-quota protests.

Nikhil Kumar Verma (21), a student of BIT, Mesra, has been blogging for a year now (etscientia.blogspot.com) and finds it an appropriate medium to express thoughts. “Blogging gives me unfettered freedom without making any demand on my time,” says Nikhil, who, in one of his recent posts gives tips on how to stay young!

Another anonymous blogger (http://facelessind.blogspot.com) says, through this medium one can reach out to a greater audience without spending any money. In his recent post he speaks about his latest accomplishment — his Pulsar 180 running over 50 kilometre per litre.

While our anonymous blogger likes his machines Manish Kumar (33), deputy manager at Steel Authority of India Limited (SAIL), Ranchi has a blog dedicated to poetry lovers. “I started my blog — Ek shaam mere naam — a destination for poetry lovers (http://manishkmr.blogspot.com) last year followed by my English (http://indianspirit.blogspot.com) and Devnagari blog (http://ek-shaam-mere-naam.blogspot.com),” Manish says.

Shailesh Bharatwasi (23), a B. Tech student from Garhwa has been writing Hindi poetry for over four years and has now started publishing them. “I can think easily in Hindi and therefore I used Unicode (an encoding system) to publish my Hindi blog (http://merikavitayen.blogspot.com),” says Shailesh.

While the kind of blogs could range from personal to community-based, Sarsij believes blogs could be used as a strong platform to promote participatory democracy. In his blog he says: “If Dr B.R. Ambedkar would have never let reservations find a place in our Constitution, if the government provided free education to the financially weak and if politicians would have really thought about the upliftment of this nation then discussions on reservations would not have taken centrestage after 59 years of Independence.”

Rakesh Kumar (25), a software engineer from Deogarh, agrees with Sarsij’s views. “Jharkhand bloggers could form a strong online community. If one finds roads in a bad condition — take a picture and put it on the blog. Or even local leaders taking bribes — upload a video on the blog. It’s surely going to help,” Rakesh (http://rakesh.in) pointed out.

However, Sarsij adds that Jharkhand has been a witness to a “talent diaspora”, which has resulted in the moderate growth of the blogger community.

Slowly but surely, Jharkhand is finding a place in the virtual community and with the steady rise in the state blogger count, where the mind can speak without fear, it would truly be democracy at its best.