February 26, 2007
Communications, in the new India, is the great leveler
A wonderful piece written by Shashi Tharoor, U.N. undersecretary-general for communications, on the transformation of India's class system thanks to cell phones, that was published in the IHT early February.
"We had possibly the worst telephone penetration rates in the world The government's indifferent attitude to the need to improve India's communications infrastructure was epitomized by Prime Minister Indira Gandhi's communications minister, C.M. Stephen.
In response to questions in parliament decrying the rampant telephone breakdowns in the country, he declared that telephones were a luxury, not a right, and that any Indian who was not satisfied with his telephone service could return his phone -- since there was an eight-year waiting list of people seeking this supposedly inadequate product."
"The cell phone revolution is exciting not only as a sign of India's economic transformation, but a symptom of something far more important: a change in the attitude of India's governing classes.
... what is truly wonderful about the "mobile miracle'' is that it has accomplished something India's old socialist policies talked about but did little to achieve: It has empowered the less fortunate.
The beneficiaries of the new mobile telephones are not just the affluent, but people who in the old days would not even have dreamed of joining those 20-year-long waiting lists."
The Permanent Link to this page is: http://www.textually.org/textually/archives/2007/02/015136.htm
