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This is indeed good news. Next step: The politicians themselves. I get a lot of email from visitors on my site who want us blog-wallahs to raise one or the other issue - if we have more beauraucrats and politicians engaged in blogging, we can make more of a difference.

I think accessibility is the key here - I am all for increased accessibility to anyone :)

you’re absolutely right, Shanti… accessibility is the key!!

journalists tend to ‘hide’ behind the one-way feedback mechanism in most forms of media. i think the interactivenature of blogs (with comments turned on, of course) is a good thing… not only for the readers but also for the journalists themselves.

in any case, lots of indian journalists are already on the blog bandwagon.

I like blogs with comments on. Many journalists blog but don’t allow comments, which is not too different from what they do when write columns.

Shanti,

Thanks for the pointer! Very much.

I should say this: that the comments are on is attributable to my ignorance about blogging and all that’s available on blogger.com. I’m still exploring. If I turned on some switch that lets comments be on, I had no idea I was doing it! Not that I’m about to turn it off.

On another but related note, I’d like to think I’ve always been accessible to people who read what I write. My email address is on pretty much every column I’ve written for rediff.com, for example, and I’ve replied to the majority of the email that’s come my way as a result. And had a back-and-forth with several of those correspondents.

so long,
dilip.

Dilip, email is for serious people - comments are accessibility for lazy people like me :)

Seriously though, except for the columnist and the emailer, no one else knows what is being discussed in emails. With comments, the debate is pretty public and leaves others in no doubt as to whether they are being responded to.