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The way the crow flies

Bridging the digital divide with a cell phone

Manjari Raman

It was an idyllic rural scene. Lush sugarcane fields on both sides of the highway, the sun peeping over the horizon like a mellow red beacon, struggling to throw back the covers of the morning mist. Birds fluffed their wings sleepily, still too lazy to chirp about the day ahead. Only the lush flowering bushes nestling by the side made an effort to unfurl their leaves. It was hard to believe that we were actually on the road to hell.

Somewhere between Modinagar and Hapur in western Uttar Pradesh, we had parted ways with the four-lane highway many kilometers ago. Now, we were also leaving behind the dubious comfort of the pitted road, turning left on to a dirt track. Clouds of dust rose as we bumped, thumped our way from one pothole to the next. Finally, we reached our destination: the village of Todi Tera Bisa, 17 kilometers and two hours away from the nearest town.

There is nothing pretty about this village. Its 5,000 residents live in abject poverty. The only source of revenue is farming and making cottage cheese. The huts are crumbling. Decay hangs like a grimy shroud over every immovable object. Curious, shy children play ankle deep in sewage that rims both sides of the village’s narrow streets. In addition to a sanitary system, there are many things Todi Tera Bisa does not have. It has no telephones. No schools. No medical facilities. Virtually no electricity — power comes eight days in the evening, eight days in the morning, never for more than two hours a day.

Hold this image. For it is here that a true telecom revolution is brewing. For the last two years, one enterprising young man has single-handedly brought Todi Tera Bisa into the global mainstream by acquiring a cell phone. Dilshad Bhai, the eldest of four brothers, read an Escotel advertisement for a Gramin cell phone connection, at subsidised rates. As it turned out, Dilshad’s village was, the way the crow flies, within the 10 km radius of the nearest Escotel tower posted on the Modinagar-Meerut highway.

Today, the village has no basic amenities but it does have STD/ISD connectivity. And that means while its inhabitants still stay beyond the pale of civic rights, they have joined the global economy. Murshad Ali can now speak to his son in Dubai. Ahmadi Begum, who never saw or used a telephone her entire life, at the age of eighty discovered the joys of staying in touch with her youngest daughter through the cell phone. Akbar, who is yet to get over the grief of not knowing his sister had died till a fortnight later because his village had no phone, is just grateful that good news and bad news can now be instantly exchanged.

The Escotel scheme offers one such rural connection per village. The charge for a one minute call is Rs three, against the regular tariff of Rs six a minute. For most people in Todi Tera Bisa even this is exorbitant but that does not stop the burning urge to reach out to near and dear ones. Dilshad says most weeks, he clocks an average of 100 calls a week. Many times an impoverished neighbour will leave a sheaf of sugarcane, a pint of milk in exchange for a call. The old venerable Imam of the local madrasa is allowed free calls.

For all his diplomatic handling of the new communication gadget, young Dilshad is rewarded by unstinted respect from the villagers. Thanks to his enterprise, the villagers now don’t have to travel to Hapur or Modinagar, a day trip, to make one call. Yet, ironically, out of the 3,000 or so villages covered by Escotel’s towers across the telecom circles of Haryana, Punjab and UP (west) only 400 villages have opted for the scheme in the last two years.

Much of it is due to a sheer lack of information. But a strapped Escotel — which operates on margins as thin as a silicon wafer like the rest of its telecom brethren — can spare few resources to push the scheme. The company’s management told me that they are now trying to initiate interest in the respective state governments to push the scheme.

Imagine all the villages across the country which could finally be linked up if the government and corporates decided to bury the hatchet on policy and work constructively for development. It may seem like a non-viable social project right now, but rural India represents a large, untapped reservoir of cell-phone customers. As long as a wire cannot be stretched across the warp and weft of the country to bring telecommunication within arm’s reach of every household, a cell-phone has to be used to bridge the digital divide.

To be connected and have access to information is fundamental to the quality of life. Ask Mashooq Ali, whose rheumy 79-year-old eyes moisten every time he calls up his great-grandson in Mumbai, to thank him for sending money.