Cell Phone Nation: How Mobile Phones Have Revolutionized Business, Politics and Ordinary Life in India (48 page)

23.
   Horst and Miller coined the term ‘expansive realization’ to describe the process by which the mobile phone allows old practices and activities to spread and be elaborated on: ‘technology is used initially with reference to desires that are historically well established, but remain unfulfilled because of the limitations of previous technologies’. Horst and Miller,
Cell Phone
, p. 6.

24.
   Sreekumar, ‘Mobile Phones and the Cultural Ecology of Fishing’, p. 175.

25.
   Abraham, ‘Mobile Phones’, p. 13.

26.
   Jonathan Donner and Marcela X. Escobari, ‘A Review of Evidence on Mobile Use by Micro and Small Enterprises in Developing Countries’,
Journal of International Development
, vol. 22 (2010), p. 651.

27.
   Horst and Miller, ‘From Kinship to Link-up: Cell Phones and Social Networking in Jamaica’, p. 761.

28.
   Sreekumar, ‘Mobile Phones and the Cultural Ecology of Fishing’, p. 175.

29.
   Donner and Escobari, ‘A Review’, p. 651.

30.
   O’Neill, ‘The “Poor Man’s Mobile Telephone”’, p. 98, takes the optimistic view that ‘direct information for marketing can eliminate the urban, middlemen market-makers’.

31.
   White,
Railroaded
, p. 289.

32.
   Donner and Escobari, ‘A Review’, p. 651.

33.
   Interview, Abhishek Sinha, with R. Jeffrey, New Delhi, 2 June 2010.

34.
   Sam Pitroda and Mehul Desai,
The March of Mobile Money: the Future of Lifestyle Management
(New Delhi: Collins Business, 2010). Sonia Kolesnikov-Jessop, ‘Mobile wallets gains currency’,
International Herald Tribune
, 6 September 2011, p. I.

35.
   Interview Abhishek Sinha, with A. Doron, New Delhi, 1 February 2011.

36.
   Interview, Anupam Varghese, with A. Doron, New Delhi, 1 February 2011.

37.
   Anindita Adhikari and Kartika Bhatia, ‘NREGA Wage Payments: Can We Bank on the Banks’,
EPW
, 2 January 2011, pp. 35, 37. Another survey noted that when a cash point was more than fifteen minutes away (one kilometre’s walk), its usefulness to a potential customer dropped dramatically. ‘Capturing the promise of mobile banking in emerging markets’,
McKinsey Quarterly
, February 2010, p. 8.

38.
   Stephen Leacock, ‘My Financial Career’, in
Literary Lapses
, many editions since 1899.

39.
   Adhikari and Bhatia, ‘NREGA Wage Payments’, p. 35.

40.
   900 million if one accepts the raw figures; more than 600 million if one discounts 30 per cent for ‘churn’—the lapsing of connections as people acquire new phones or new service providers. In 2006, India had only 71,000 bank branches. Pankaj Kumar and Romesh Golait, ‘Bank Penetration and SHG-Bank Linkage Programme: a Critique’,
Reserve Bank of India Occasional Papers
, vol. 29, no. 3 (2009), pp. 120–1.

41.
   Interview, Anupam Varghese, with A. Doron, New Delhi, 1 February 2011.

42.
   Charles Thomson, manager, customer relations, EKO, email to R. Jeffrey, 26 September 2011.

43.
   E. C. Thompson, ‘Mobile Phones, Communities and Social Networks among Foreign Workers in Singapore’,
Global Networks
, vol. 9, no. 3 (2009), pp. 359–80.

44.
   N. Hughes and S. Lonie, ‘M-PESA: Mobile Money for the “Unbanked”: Turning Cellphones into 24-Hour Tellers in Kenya’,
Innovations
2, no. 1–2 (2007). pp. 63–81.

45.
   [Lalitha Iyer],
Documentation on Empowering ASHAs—Mobile Money Trasfer, Distt. Shiekpura
[sic],
BIHAR
(New Delhi: Norway India Partnership Initiative Secretariat, 2010), p. 3.

46.
   Ibid., p. 9.

47.
   Ibid., p. 7.

48.
   Ibid., p. 8.

49.
   A woman’s account
balance showed on her mobile phone. A shopkeeper-agent of EKO could, in theory, demand a bribe before paying funds to an EKO account holder, but a local shopkeeper was more vulnerable to local retribution and boycott than a government servant or bank clerk.

50.
   Nokia abandoned its mobile-banking attempt in India in March 2012.
The Register
, 12 March 2012,
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/03/12/
nokia_money_gone/
(accessed 14 April 2012).

51.
   Thomas K. Thomas,
BusinessLine
, 24 January 2011,
www.thehindubusinessline.com/features/
eworld/article1118867.ece?css=print
(accessed 31 October 2011).

52.
   Interview, Abhishek Sinha, with R. Jeffrey, New Delhi, 2 June 2010.

53.
   Thomas K. Thomas,
BusinessLine
, 24 January 2011.

54.
   For a detailed account of the river economy and passenger distribution system in Banaras, see Assa Doron,
Caste, Occupation and Politics on the Ganges: Passages of Resistance
(Farnham: Ashgate, 2008).

55.
   Agar,
Constant Touch
, p. 5.

56.
   E. P. Thompson, ‘Time, Work-Discipline, and Industrial Capitalism’,
Past and Present
, vol. 38 (1967), pp. 56–97.

57.
   A. Gupta, ‘The Reincarnation of Souls and the Rebirth of Commodities: Representations of Time in “East” and “West”’,
Cultural Critique
, vol. 22 (1992), pp. 187–211.

58.
   Rajesh Veeraraghavan, Naga Yasodhar and Kentaro Toyama, ‘Warana Unwired: Replacing PCs with Mobile Phones in a Rural Sugarcane Cooperative’,
Information Technologies and International Development
, vol. 5, no. 1 (Spring 2009), p. 84.

59.
   Maharashtrian rats were not alone in enjoying a nice cable dinner. In the US, sharp-toothed Brooklyn squirrels brought author Andrew Blum’s telecom connections crashing down. Blum,
Tubes: a Journey to the Center of the Internet
(New York: Ecco, 2012), pp. 1–2, 264.

60.
   Veeraraghavan
et al
., ‘Warana Unwired’, pp. 92–3.

61.
   Ibid., p. 90.

62.
   Fischer,
America Calling
, p. 93.

63.
   Surabhi Mittal, Sanjay Gandhi and Gaurav Tripathi,
Socio-Economic Impact of Mobile Phones on Indian Agriculture
, Working Paper No. 246 (New Delhi: Indian Council for Research on International Economic Relations, 2010), p. 18.

64.
   Uppal and Kathuria, ‘Impact’, p. 54.

65.
   O’Neill, ‘The “Poor Man’s Mobile Telephone”’, p. 98.

66.
   Mittal
et al
.,
Socio-Economic Impact
, p. 4.

67.
   Ibid., p. 14.

68.
   
Hindustan Times
, 16 October 2011,
www.hindustantimes.com/StoryPage/
Print/758095.aspx
(accessed 11 November 2011).

69.
   IFFCO Kisan
Sanchar Limited, ‘Performance for the Financial Year Apr 10—Mar 2011’,
www.iksl.in
(accessed 11 November 2011). Prince Mathews Thomas, ‘A Rich Harvest: the Win-Win Initiative to Help Farmers’,
Forbes India
, 18 February 2011,
http://business.in.com/article/work-in-progress/a-rich-harvest-the-winwin-initiative-to-help-farmers/22412/0
(accessed 11 November 2011).

70.
   
Indian Express
, 4 September 2011,
www.indianexpress.com/story-print/841426/
(accessed 11 November 2011).

71.
   IFFCO Kisan Sanchar Limited, ‘IFFCO’,
www.iksl.in
(accessed 11 November 2011).

72.
   
DNA
, 21 December 2010,
http://www.dnaindia.com/print710.php?cid=1483995
(accessed 11 November 2011).

73.
   Nokia too began offering mobile phone service to farmers in 2009, with free trial periods as part of a package to increase the penetrations of its brand into rural areas. The service was titled ‘Nokia Life Tools’; see
http://sloan-review.mit.edu/improvisations/
2012/02/28/
information-equals-power-nokias-sms-services-for-farmers/#.T4tg-3J2qok
(accessed 15 April 2012)

74.
   Thomas, ‘A Rich Harvest’.

75.
   P. F. Lazarsfeld, B. Berelson, and H. Gaudet,
The People’s Choice: How the Voter Makes Up His
[sic]
Mind in a Presidential Campaign
(New York: Columbia University Press, 1944).

76.
   Thomas, ‘A Rich Harvest’.

77.
   Fischer,
America Calling
, pp. 84–5.

6. FOR POLITICS

  
1.
   Vicente L. Rafael, ‘The Cell Phone and the Crowd: Messianic Politics in the Contemporary Philippines’,
Public Culture
, vol. 15, no. 3 (2003), pp. 399–425. Robert Jensen, ‘The Digital Provide’,
Quarterly Journal of Economics
, vol. 22, no. 3 (August 2007), pp. 879–924.

  
2.
   Rafael, ‘Cell Phone’, p. 400.

  
3.
   Rheingold,
Smart Mobs
, p. 20.

  
4.
   Ibid., pp. xii-xiii.

  
5.
   Ibid., p. 168.

  
6.
   Manuel Castells, Mireia Fernandez-Ardevol, Jack Linchuan Qiu and Araba Sey,
Mobile Communication and Society. A Global Perspective
(Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2007), pp. 196–7. Defeated in a later election, Roh Moo-Hyun died in 2009, apparently a suicide.

  
7.
   Ibid., pp. 201–02.

  
8.
   Ibid., p. 188.

  
9.
   Ibid., p. 211.

10.
   Ibid., p. xxi.

11.
   Evgeny
Morozov,
The Net Delusion
(London: Allen Lane, 2011), p. xiii.

12.
   Ibid., p. 320.

13.
   Vivek Kumar,
India’s Roaring Revolution: Dalit Assertion and New Horizons
(Delhi: Gagandeep Publications, 2006), p. 53.

14.
   Ajoy Bose,
Behenji: a Political Biography of Mayawati
(New Delhi: Penguin, 2008), pp. 30–1.

15.
   Bose,
Behenji
, pp. 28–40. There is a more detailed account of the 2007 election episode in Robin Jeffrey and Assa Doron, ‘Mobile-izing: Democracy, Organization and India’s First “Mass Mobile Phone” Elections’,
Journal of Asian Studies
, vol. 71, no. 1 (2012), pp. 63–80

16.
   Quoted in Bose,
Behenji
, p. 59 and see also p. 57.

17.
   Barbara R. Joshi, ‘Recent Developments in Inter-Regional Mobilization of Dalit Protest in India’,
South Asia Bulletin
, vol. 7 (1987), p. 86.

18.
   BAMCEF bulletin, 1974, quoted in Bose,
Behenji
, p. 34.

19.
   Akhilesh Suman,
Pioneer
, 12 May 2007,
http://www.dailypioneer.com/archives2/
default12.asp?…hy_path_it=D%3A%5Cdailypioneer%Carchiv es2%5Cmay1207
(accessed 22 May 2007). M. Hasan and Chandrakant Naidu,
Hindustan Times
, 11May 2007,
http://www.hindustantimes.com/StoryPage/
Print/221841.aspx
(accessed 27 July 2010).

20.
   David Plouffe,
The Audacity to Win
(New York: Viking, 2010), pp. 21, 36.

21.
   Barbara R. Joshi, ‘Scheduled Caste Voters: New Data, New Questions’,
EPW
, 15 August 1981, p. 1359. Sudha Pai,
Dalit Assertion and the Unfinished Democratic Revolution: the Bahujan Samaj Party in Uttar Pradesh
(New Delhi: Sage, 2002), pp. 37, 78.