The end of invisibility

It is also something, I suspect, that is going to contribute to a significant phenomenon in the near future which is the emergence of the small town. I stumbled upon the basis for that hunch by accident while looking for information on a couple of places in Maharashtra. Every name I keyed in threw up the name of a website that upon exploring turned out to be a privately run site on the town or the district as the case was. I widened the search by typing dot com or dot net next to names of other towns in other states both small and not so small but certainly outside the ambit of what is generally considered metropolitan India and scored a hit in almost every case. Some were mere intentions. Abohar.com, Bagalkot.com, Chaibasa.com, Dabhoi.com and Etah.com had been registered and were still under construction. Others, such as Gadag.com and Ibrahimpatnam.com had gone so far as to put up a visual welcome mat — a map in the first instance and an architectural detail in the second. And there were others stillwhere clearly some thought and effort had gone into the making. Some sites dwelt on the attractions of the place. The site devoted to Jagdalpur in the Bastar district for example talks of "spectacular mountain ranges, dense forests and cool rivers". It also gives a comprehensive guide to getting there, accommodation and sightseeing. Other sites appear to be directed at those who have left but still want a connection with home. Mannar.net ("dedicated to the people of Mannar district") has Tamil jokes, music and film news while Nizamabad.com invites people associated with the place to "share your experience". Others are pure and simple commerce openings such as Kalol.com set up by an entrepreneur for business in Kalol. The people behind these dotcoms are clearly computer and Net savvy and, as in the case of Satara.com, of an average age of 24 with an avowed passion for among other things, bikes, MTV and cooking.

How will all this translate into change? There is of course the more practically significant aspect of the Net which is its ability to connect the small city or town with the wider world. Job searches are what many young people in small towns use cybercafes for along with news. Some people will always need to leave home for work elsewhere. But what these web sites with their creative deigns, their confident editorials, their readers’ contributions (Satara.com for instance has articles on "origin of name of Satara" and "Gudi Padva celebrations"), their pride in local attributes, art, culture, and local telephone directories, services list, classifieds and so on, do is point to a changing mindset.

For close to four decades following Independence, the only cities in India considered worthy of mention were the quartet of Bombay, Delhi, Calcutta and Madras. Bombay was clearly the kingpin. You could see it in the time film releases took to reach other cities. And you could see it in the fashions. As a shopkeeper in Chennai once told me "fashions are born in Bombay travel to Delhi and are buried in Madras’. Somewhere along the way competitors such as Bangalore, Ahmedabad and Chandigarh emerged jostling and pushing for a space in metropolitan India. People in smaller cities and towns on the other hand always had to look outside not just for work and higher education but for trends and cultural validation. The surge of local websites on the other hand suggests a new assertiveness. If nothing else then what the Net might do is provide an end to invisibility.

The surge of local websites on small towns suggests a new assertiveness