Winds of Change In South Asia

We live in a world of rapid change. Things are changing faster than we can imagine. I remember when we were young we used to tune in to news on the radio. We used to listen and think. All the news sources were unidirectional to the listeners. Now, suddenly everything is getting changed. We are no longer listening or watching; now we are speaking out loudly, forcefully, and courageously. We are witnessing the unimaginable rise of the information revolution where we can write independently in the virtual world. We are blogging to express our own ideas and to share our joys and pains with the rest of the world.

The most amazing thing happened in Bangladesh on December 16, 2005 when somewhere in..., a Norwegian company in Bangladesh, inaugurated a blogging platform in Bangla. It named it Badh Bhangar Awaz, as it implies the sound of breaking off the dam to unlock the free expression of motions, emotions, and interactions in Bangla blogs. Their site has already received over one hundred thousand hits within a month. All the would-be and real thinkers, writers, critics, and singers are now flocking at the Bangla site to express themselves.

When people are looking for enlightenment, this is the beginning of a new era where bloggers express themselves to bring out the most unseen and the most hidden treasures of unexpressed minds in the obscure corners of South Asia. The beginning of Desicritics is another victory for all of us, where all the South Asian people will join the rest of the world in telling their side of story. It is really the beginning of the end of the digital divide. Indeed, Noble Laureate poet Rabindranath Tagore imagined that real awakening of human minds in a fearless and undivided world (that we still have a long way to reach) when he says,

"Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high;
Where knowledge is free;
Where the world has no been broken into fragments by narrow domestic walls;
Where words come out from the depth of truth...
Into the heaven of freedom, my Father,
let my country awake."