Sorry for the late update again, I've been quite busy off late & hence the fortnightly roundup of the Hindi Blogosphere is a week late. But as they say, “better be late than never”!! ;) So without much ado, lets get going!

Sanjay reported the news changes & the launch of a new look Tarakash website which has been under testing for sometime now. On the other hand, Sunil is writing how India has gained the popularity for developing life saving medicines at low costs in the last few years and how this is under threat given that Swiss medic company Novartis has sued Indian Government as the government refused a Novartis patent on the cancer drug Glivec stating that its not a new composition but rather an old composition with some minor changes & thus(as per Indian law) Novartis can't have a patent on it. The reason why Novartis sued is pretty much obvious, if they loose it, other Indian pharmaceutical companies would be free to make this life-saving drug & will be selling it all over the world at much cheaper costs which can be plainly guessed from the fact that the expenses for treatment of AIDS using the drug sold by the western pharma companies shot upto $20000 while the same treatment using drugs from Indian pharmaceutical Cipla cost just around $2000!! No wonder that these big bullies of drug world were unhappy with South-African government & filed a suit against it(which was later withdrawn) when it tried to buy the drug from Indian companies! Just goes to show that medication is not cheaper & if a cheaper alternative is available you are not entitled to have it, you have a right to a cure only if you have deep and fat pockets!!

Moving on, Tarun completed his 2 years in Hindi Blogosphere(am almost there as well), Shrish reported on how a self-proclaimed spiritual leader Mata(Mother) Nirmala Devi insulted the Indian National Flag by putting it at her feet!! Outrageous as it is, a lot of bloggers called for her head & some people did the right thing of filing a PIL in a court & sending the photos to the offices of Prime Minister & President of India. Now lets see if this thing is noticed at all & if she gets anything for this crime since the Flag Code clearly states an imprisonment of upto 3 years for anyone who insults the Tricolour by trampling it or by any other means!! The travel train continued on my blog though as I wrapped up the travelogue of my Ajmer-Pushkar weekend trip in Part 3 & Part 4. Though in last few weeks, my music preferences have suddenly taken a 360 degree turn and all of a sudden I've been listening & liking World/Fusion/Classical instrumental & vocal music performed by maestros like Shiv Kumar Sharma(plays awesome Santoor), Hariprasad Chaurasia(bamboo flute king), Pandit Jasraj(classical vocal) which I've not heard or liked ever before!! Hard to say that am not surprised by a this sudden change in my taste!! ;)

Indian pro-blogger Amit Agarwal has expressed his views about viability of blogs written in Indian languages from a commercial point & what can be done to popularise them. Jagdish warned about one of the organised frauds being conducted by agents of the Life Insurance Corporation of India regarding which the company has also issued circulars cautioning people about the fraud & asking them to beware of them. The tele-marketeers are rapidly increasing in India and they really make you hate your mobile phones since for some people, a large number of incoming calls is from those marketeers. So as I shared my experiences and vented my frustration at big companies, be it Airtel or ICICI Bank or any other; they are all involved in pushing the tele-marketing to the limit of driving people mad! Sagar also shared his horrible experience with the customer service of his ISP, Tata Indicom and I can vouch for it along with hundreds of others, they indeed provide a third rate service.

Shrish did a comparison between WordPress software & WordPress.com blog hosting which I think is a bit biased in favour of Blogger.com to which he migrated from WordPress.com!! On the other hand, Jitu finally came out with his secret & let everyone know that Google has launched the hindi version of their news site. But sometimes one feels whether the country is going to the dogs?? It certainly seems so when a pack of goons beat up a family infront of policemen & police refuses to file the complaint of the victims & the goons are given medical treatment by the police while the wounds of the victims are shoved aside labelled as minor bruises!! The atrocity is really astounding and even the mainstream media is not interested in bringing these kinda issues to light, they are more busy in covering high profile & glamourous news items like Shilpa Shetty's win at Big Brother!! Even the Nithari case was given a cold shoulder by the media channels who were busy covering the kidnapping of Adobe India's CEO's son when there were about 14 kids kidnapped & murdered by a psychopath and the police were indifferent as ever about it!! It was only acted upon when the media finally ran out of any sensational stories & needed some fuel to keep their respective channels going & continue the inflow of advertising money!! I think thats why Eswami wrote that reporters are pitiful sensation seeking beings & that appears to be true in most of the cases!!

A sensation arose across the hindi blogosphere when Yahoo! stole the content from a couple of blogs when they launched their Hindi & Malyalam portals. As S.Chandrashekharan reports, when accused of plagiarism Yahoo! quietly removed the content without so much as bothering to acknowledge the ridiculous activity & apologizing for it. Imagine, if someone had done this kinda thing with Yahoo!, they'd straightaway sued that guy!! But finally Yahoo! came out with an apology & blamed its content provider Webdunia.com for the incident. I personally believe that Yahoo! should seriously re-consider its content provider as not everytime they can get away with such a thing & what has happened once can happen again. Though am all for second chances but seriously, this kind of act is usually done by amateurs & newbies who don't know what they are doing & no professional would do it as they know that they'd be caught in the act in a blink of an eye!!

Another sensational controversy that gripped the hindi blogosphere recently was regarding who should be shown the door by Narad, the first & foremost hindi blog aggregator which aggregates every hindi blog. This aggregator is responsible for driving a lot of traffic to hindi blogs & the issue arose with some bloggers writing supposed nonsense about religion & communalism, attacking other bloggers on a personal level etc. Sanjay blogged about what kind of blogs should be removed from Narad to which some agreed while some(including yours truly) said that freedom of speech is for everyone & those who don't like a particular kind of posts(or blogs) can just ignore them. All of this was targetted at the controversial & subjectively incorrect group blog Mohalla and this whole issue agitated a number of people who are fed up with this kind of useless debates & indeed this reflected in Jagdish's post when he asked his blog to be removed when Mohalla is shown the door from Narad. But finally after some blasts from here & there, the dust settled down and its peace again, maybe the lull before yet another storm!! ;)

Moving on, in another post, Jagdish replied to a question posed by someone, explaining why Bulls of stockmarket are called so & what are Bears there. Jitu is regretting why he's not in South Korea where a bank sends its employees on dates at its expense!! ;) Google run Blogger.com is being generous on hindi bloggers as it introduced a tool for its users that will allow them to write & blog in Hindi.

And on the end note, there was a Hindi Bloggers’ Meet today in New Delhi which lasted a bit more than 6 hours!!

Thats all for this issue folks, adios!! :)

Links courtsey: Narad