The Internet is being put to novel use in India's southern state of Karnataka: as a shield to protect a bureaucrat against powerful and potentially dangerous enemies:
As her husband made powerful enemies, Ms. Jayashree began to fear for his life. And so she devised an unusual ploy to protect him: she blogged.
"We're creating a fortress around him — a fortress of people," she said in a telephone interview. "I wanted to inform the people that this is happening, that my husband is a whistle-blower, so that it becomes the responsibility of every citizen to protect him."
The result is a small-scale test of whether India's technology revolution, which is empowering tens of millions, can tamp the corruption that hinders India's ambitions. ...