The Indian middle class is famously apathetic to politics. If poll numbers are any indication, we Indians treat Election Day as just another holiday. If the popularity of Wynand papers (reference, Ayn Rand: The Fountainhead) like the Times of India is any indication then we are more interested in Karishma Kapur than politicians that affect our lives the most.

It seems to me that the popularity of blogs might change it all. While a majority of blogs out there don’t contribute anything original and merely serve to link to articles published in mainstream media there are still a lot of blogs that not only point to news items in mainstream media but also provide incisive commentary. And hey – even the blogs that just link to other blogs or news articles serve an invaluable purpose. Not only does it mean that the writers of those blogs are reading more and are more aware of what’s going around them but also that they are talking and writing about it.

I’ve always thought that the Achilles heal of Indian politics has been that the highly educated have always felt that politics as a profession is below them. As a result – right from the college level politics is dominated by people who’re least interested in sitting in classrooms. They are, with some exceptions, the hooligans who’d rather create a ruckus outside the classroom instead of sweating it out in studies or sports or anything worthwhile. The irony of course is that those are the guys who end up in politics and draught laws that affect us all.

Hopefully, with more and more of us gaining interest in what’s happening around us through blogs – this will change and politics will not be left to professional politicians alone.