Taking a flight recently, I was struck by India’s engagement with the mobile phone and how it has gone from novelty to status to necessity to distraction and now full-on obsession. Waiting to board, the only person who was not calling, texting or fiddling with their cellphones was a two year old kid, and he should have that sorted out pretty shortly judging by how young users are getting these days. On the flight, the two twenty-somethings next to me, traveling together, spent almost the entire time banging away on their keyboards, one a Samsung, the other an iPad, even though there was no signal and they had been instructed not to use mobile devices. They barely exchanged a word. Smartphones haven’t made people smarter, just given them more options to engage with a device they spend more time on than any other human activity.
It has also given ?communication? a new meaning. I know so many families, husbands, wives and kids, who prefer to call each other on their mobiles, even though they are in the same house and in the next room. It is not just how ubiquitous the device has become but also how it has changed human relationships and completely destroyed traditional methods of social interaction. I was sitting in a coffee shop in a five-star hotel last week, when three businessmen walked in and settled down at the next table. They wasted no time in picking up their cellphones and engaging in three separate conversations. They were obviously partners in a business venture but they could have been total strangers. Till I left, which was 30 minutes later, they had not exchanged a word with each other or even the waiter?they had ordered by pointing to items on the menu so as not to interrupt the individual conversations they were having.
How exactly this revolution, positive and negative, has come about is the subject of a new book, The Great Indian Phone Book: How the Cheap Cell Phone Changes Business, Politics and Daily Life. The title is a bit of a mouthful but it does tell us, upfront, the trigger for India’s mobile madness?cost. In the space of a decade, the mobile phone in India has made a mockery of class, caste, income and any other social parameter because it has become so cheap to buy and use. The authors, Assa Doron and Robin Jeffrey, are old India hands. Doron, an Israeli, is a specialist on India as well as new media. Jeffrey, a Canadian, has a doctorate in Indian history and has been writing on India for three decades now. In the book, which, I’m sure you can download on your iPad or smartphone, they focus on three groups?the controllers: the bureaucrats, politicians and capitalists who wrestle over control of radio frequency spectrum with resulting scandals and scams; the servants: the marketers, agents, technicians, tower-builders, repairers and second-hand dealers who carry mobile phones to the masses; and third, the users: the politicians, activists, businesses and households that adapt the mobile phone to their needs.
The book makes for fascinating reading and probes the entire universe of the mobile phone in India, the upside and the the downside; the troublesome, disruptive force that the mobile phone can be. Yet, so swift and dramatic has been the spread and usage of the mobile-phone that we have conveniently forgotten how life was?or wasn’t?without the device. Entrepreneurs are a segment who have had their lives and businesses transformed. Just over a decade ago, India had 35 million telephones, only four million of them were mobiles, clunky Bakelite versions and the cost of a call was pretty prohibitive. Today, we have almost a billion mobile connections and it has changed everyone’s world, especially businesses and entrepreneurs. Instant global connections mean that you can conduct business any time, any place and even on the move. Today, companies use videoconferencing and emails on their smartphones which saves an incredible amount of time, effort and cost. It has turbo-charged businesses but also expanded opportunities as well as raised aspirational levels for everyone.
I was with a businessman friend in Singapore when he concluded a deal on the phone to Sydney, emailed the contract via his iPad, had it vetted, and by videoconference, had his partner in Bangalore courier the formal contract the same day.What is now a Rs 30 crore deal was done and dusted over the course of a lunch. Of course, it had been in the works for a few weeks but technology has cut down decision making in amazing ways. Sometimes we forget just how doing business has been taken to a totally new level with websites, promotions on mobile platforms and myriad other business-related activity. Even recruitment?and the search for jobs?is now largely based on the net and mobile devices. The mobile phone is the most significant personal communications device in history and often, because it has become so ubiquitous and almost an extension of ourselves, we forget that. The new book I mentioned is a timely reminder.
The writer is Group Editor, Special Projects & Features, ‘The Indian Express’