Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2013. xxxii, 293 pp. (Maps, illus.) US$29.95. ISBN 978-0-674-07268-8.
The authors of this book say in the preface that they wrote this book for themselves, because both of them, old “India hands,” had been so struck by the “in-your-faced-ness” of Indian mobile telephony (the words mobile and cell phone are used interchangeably), in the hands of poor rickshaw pullers as much, if not more than, the hands of business tycoons. “We aimed to write a book that would hold up its head as both sound scholarship and engaged reading. Our potential readers were us: curious people, eager for understanding and intolerant of jargon” (xiii).
The book comes in three parts: two chapters under the heading “Controlling” are about communications as they were, about state regulation of the old systems, and then about the regulatory struggles during India’s post-IMF market reforms, which coincided with the new technology. This is a story backed up with lots of facts and figures: in 2002 there were 45 million phone connections for 1 billion people: in 2012 there were 900 million for 1.1 billion people. This explosion was accompanied by epic struggles between entrepreneurs, ahead of the curve, and regulators and legislators who lagged behind. The confusion allowed breathtaking opportunism and outright corruption, which drove the process pell-mell down to the lowest cost for the largest market. Capitalism of doubtful propriety delivered new power to the poorest of the poor. The second part, “Connecting,” consists of two chapters that address how hundreds of thousands of technicians and entrepreneurs were enrolled to build the telephone factories and the telemasts, to train the shop-keepers (who sold SIM cards and prepayment cards), and how small businesses have piggy-backed with their repair centres (and training programs sold to would-be “engineers”). Much of this is interesting observation on how existing networks within India’s highly structured society captured different parts of the process. The third and longest part consists of four chapters under the heading “Consuming,” which illustrate the impact of cell phones on large and small businesses, politics, women and households, wrong- doing (covering pornography, corruption, crime and terrorism). The description of how a new mobile-based banking service (Eko) has developed in Bihar for poor and illiterate people is a fascinating example of IT developmental leap-frogging. The presence of mobile phones (and their cameras and instant messaging) has reduced skulduggery at polling booths. New brides may be denied visits to their natal home, because now they can phone instead: or perhaps have their phones summarily confiscated by a mother-in-law.
The last chapter is titled “Conclusion: It’s the Autonomy, stupid,” and it brings in new topics such as health, the waste/recycling industry, and language. Once when I was doing fieldwork in the then south Bihar, I played back the interview tape to my Ho adivasi interviewee. He and the coterie around him were thrilled: “this is Ho radio,” they said. In this last chapter I read of the next step: a Gond news service, in which any person can be a stringer and SMS a message to a central editor, who can then post all acceptable stories for any interested audience. In effect it is “Gond News” on air. This has led to legal challenges: does this service break the broadcasting regulations or not? The newly empowered Gonds will certainly not give up their new service lightly.
The book is infused with little cameos of this kind, and little comparative asides. Mobiles elsewhere in the world have been developed for specific religious users. “The Ilkone i800 is specially designed to serve Muslims all across the world to address their needs, and add value to their spiritual self being” (12). It provides automatic and precise timings for prayers, can point to Mecca, and includes the whole Holy Qur’an, in the original and in English, etc. An Israeli kosher phone company’s mobile multiplies the cost of calls on the Sabbath by a factor of 122.
The book does what the authors wanted it to do. It is overwhelmingly a description of what has happened and is happening. It hardly engages with any arguments. In some ways I think this is an opportunity missed, but perhaps it is for others to delve into the deeper questions. Culture may be changed in small ways by the new technology, but the message is overwhelmingly that the supposedly revolutionary new technology can only work by acknowledging the dominance of local culture. Why does this triumph seem so easy? There is no attempt to go anywhere near such a question.
Graham P. Chapman
Lancaster University, Lancaster, United Kingdom
pp. 366-368