Blogging in Bangalore

I first came to Bangalore in 1989.   Even then I remember it being described as “the fastest growing city in Asia.”  I don’t know who first made that statement or what criteria they used as a measure, but India’s third most populous city has certainly changed beyond recognition in the last 19 years that I’ve been coming.  Not surprising really as it’s known as the Silicone valley of India due to its pre-emnient position as the leading contributor to India’s rapidly expanding IT industry.  It is also home to the aerospace and defence industries, not to mention the numerous call centres which service companies in Europe, Australia and the United States.  Sadly all this growth has its down side.    

…Bangalore is also known as India’s suicide capital.  According to the National Crime Records Bureau this fast-track city averages almost 2000 suicide deaths annually, topping the list in the country.   Most of them are between 15 and 35 years old.  Psychiatrists put much of this down to stress caused by Bangaloreans being unable to cope with such rapid changes.  Another reason is that many young people working in these industries have no family life.  One Doctor said: “By the time they return from work, it is quite late. Their family members are either sleeping or they themselves are too tired to talk, which makes them very lonely.”    One senior police officer who has been handling suicide cases in Bangalore says growing urbanization is the culprit. “Love failures, exam stress are some of the other main causes for young people taking the extreme step”, he adds.

So what’s all this got to do with blogging?  Well quite simply if you want to connect with young people in this city, in order to help them, you really need to be plugging into their preferred means of communication.  Number one on the list is SMS text messaging followed closely by social networking tools like MSN and Skype and web sites such as My Space, Bibo and of course blogs. 

And that’s exactly what my colleagues at Feba India want to do.  Using their popular music-based magazine programme called Reality FM as a spring-board, they want to begin using the blogosphere to further interact with their growing audience.  By touching on the issues that affect young Bangaloreans in a relevant, lively and entertaining way, they receive hundreds of text messages and ‘phone calls from listeners.  Blogging will open up a new avenue to engage with them.

To that end, I’ve been joined in India by my Feba UK colleague, Mark Taylor, who together with colleagues from Feba India begin a ‘blogging-shop’ this week, to launch a reality FM blog site which will encourage participation from listeners, as well as podcasts and other tools to help them.

Will it make a difference?  Watch this space!