Writing a blog appeared to be a simple and harmless activity when I decided to take a plunge about a year back. My son who has some encouraging views on my writing skills goaded me to continue writing with some regularity so that I could give vent to emotions which sometimes build up on incosequential issues. This exercise I expected would also build up a network of like minded persons and give us a platform for experience sharing .
My wife has been writing a blog for a longer period (in Hindi) and has cultivated a circle of friends over various cities. Her circle includes people of various age groups who share an enthusiasm for narrating day to day experiences in simple language. I found some narrations of such bloggers , specially those relating to an old friend or a departed family member quite moving . Off course the number of such blog writers is less as compared to number of writers merely trying to impress with sentimental and emotional outbursts still they are a close community who share joys and sorrows and sometimes also meet each other while visiting another town where a known blogger resides.
My experience was however quite different on this wordpress blog .While I had started this as a hobby for writing on any topic of immeadiate relevance to me , the report of Sixth Central Pay Commission became available on CPC website. Every week I used to go through one or two chapters and prepare short notes just for personal record and information .I started posting these short notes on my blog also along with other writings. Since at that time everyone around was also calculating benefits expected out of CPC recommendations therefore I also made some calculations on Excel sheet and later worked out through the same sheet the benefits expected for others.
As the feverpitch for Sixth CPC report built up this blog also started receiving large number of hits, peaking to eight thousand hits on a day in August 2008. (So far this blog has generated more than 1.78 Lakh hits). But thereafter a new class of readers completely overtook this blog asking for individual information on pay and pension related matters. I tried to periodically explain to readers that I did not have any intention of running a helpline service .This was also beyond my capabilities and being a working person I had no time for any further resarch on service matters. Moreover I also wanted someone to read and appreciate my so called literary pieces on other matters. In fact in my view popularity of pay commission related writings was expected to be a temporary phenomenon. However things failed to change , the stream of queries continued . I found that more than 95% readers came via CPC related writings only. In my frustration over lack of interest in my creative pieces I almost gave up this blog with the hope that my abondenment would discourage the visitors for pay related readings and queries.
After a few months I opened this blogsite and saw some disturbing trends. Some of the readers were quarelling between themeselves over profession related matters in less than acceptable fashion. Some comments were not in good taste.I realised that even blogging needs some policing. If things are left to indisciplined readers the consequences can be disastorous. I have put some regulatory mechanism in place now to restict comments and would be monitoring regularly.My apologies to readers who had a free run in recent months and to those who were at the receiving end . I would also continue to take this blog out of the CPC mania and try to develop it on originally conceived lines. Let us see how far this endeavour succeeds.
