Futures of Learning

Mobile phones first arrived in India in 1995, and since then their adoption has grown exponentially, with average annual growth of 80 percent. Mobile phones have thus become a significant presence in the social, cultural and economic lives of Indians at all levels of society. While young people have embraced mobile phones enthusiastically, corresponding changes in social norms have caused anxieties among some parts of the population. In this post I will explore these issues in-depth, beginning with an overview of phone use, followed by an examination of resulting changes in social dynamics and a brief look at the use of mobile phones for development purposes.

As of October 31, 2008, there were a little over 320 million mobile phone subscribers in the country, which is about 26% of the total population (http://www.india-cellular.com). The great majority, about 24 million use GSM systems. The most important cell phone carriers are Airtel with 25.04 percent of the market, followed by Reliance (CDMA and GSM) with 17.93 percent and Vodafone/Essar with 17.70 percent. There are a wide variety of handsets available, provided by both foreign and Indian companies and catering to every niche of the Indian market. The most expensive GSM handset cost about US $12,000; it is marketed under the Nokia super premium luxury brand Vertu, and shows that mobile phones are status items for Indians of all income classes. Airtel and Vodaphones sell Apple’s 3G iPhones for about US $700, depending on capacity. On the other end of the spectrum, aiming at the so-called bottom-of-the-pyramid (bop) market, the Nokia 1200 costs 1200 rupees, which is about $24. The CDMA handset market is firmly dominated by Reliance, which sells Blackberry smart phones for about $620, while on the low end, Tata Indicom sells a Samsung Model for $20, which is just under 1000 rupees. 60.90 % of the population is covered by mobile signal http://www.itu.int/ITU-D/icteye/DisplayCountry.aspx?code=IND. In any given covered area, between 4 and 7 companies provide mobile phone services, often offering a dozen tariff plans. Although I could not find any definite numbers, more people use prepaid cards than contracts (http://www.gsmap.org/wp-content/uploads/files/prepaid%20connections037215.pdf).

Mobile Social Dynamics

Especially among poor Indians, mobile phone ownership is dominated by men; a study conducted in 2006 found that women had greater access than men to household-owned land lines than to individually-owned mobile phones, but had similar access to public phones and much greater access to phones owned by others (Iqbal 2007). Even when women owned a mobile phone, it was primarily men who made the decision about how much money to allocate to phone use (Iqbal 2007). Similarly, in their study of urban Delhi, Tacchi and Chandola (Heather Horst, personal communication) found that men dominated ownership of mobile phones; women typically had to ask permission to use a mobile and also were monitored while talking. On the other hand, in a recent study of West Bengal, Tenhunen (2008) notes that women who are (increasingly) gaining access to mobile phones also gain greater mobility in general, although stigma associated with female mobility does remain. Gender relations are thus central to the dynamics of mobile phone use. More generally, Tenhunen (2008) argues that mobile phones increase the efficiency of the market, facilitate alternative political patterns, and invigorate traditional networks of kinship and village sociality.

Regional differences also play a role here. Sooryamoorthy, Miller and Shrum’s (2008) study of mobile users in the South Indian state of Kerala, which is known for its well-developed education system and youth and women programs, found that, in contrast to those who use email and other programs, mobile phone use tended to decrease the diversity of geographical ties. Research by Donner et al from Microsoft Research India (2008) also suggest a collectivist ethos, including in middle class households. They note that individuals share across generations (parents and children), with their peers (siblings and, to a lesser degree, friends). In some cases this may involve simply borrowing a phone because someone is nearby (what they term ‘proximate sharing’) or it may involve ‘distributed sharing,’ examples of which are a parent trying to reach a child through their friend’s phone. Others use their phones to contact point people who are relied upon to spread information. Donner (2007) argues that the sending and receiving of missed calls, or beeping, is another way that individuals in India communicate without the outlay of money or minutes.

Many have commented upon the great enthusiasm Indian youth express for the mobile phone, as can be seen in the utube videos posted on the Indian section of mobileyouth.org (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tcPoVt--9UU&feature=related ). This enthusiasm is also evident in the growth of game applications for mobile phones, which I will examine in Friday’s post. The academic literature on this usage is only beginning to emerge, however (Kumar and Thomas 2006). Chakraborty (2006) conducted a comparative study among Indian and American university students and discovered that the former relied on their mobiles more frequently as their only phone, and thus developed a different relationship to them than their American counterparts. There were also significant differences in the practice of text messaging.

Swank’s (Heather Horst - personal communication) recent research among Tibetan refugees in North India suggests that mobile phones are contributing to cross-gender forms of communication. In her preliminary analysis of 700 text messages, Swank found that teenagers were exchanging jokes – quite often ‘dirty jokes’ – over text messages that they would not normally utter in person. Steenson and Donner (2009) note that the sharing of mobile phones complicates and is complicated by traditional gender roles. This suggests that the mobile phone is enabling young people (as well as older ones) to subvert established notions of gender relations.

These social transformations do not go unchallenged, especially by “moral panic agents” that seek to police the proliferation of mobile phones, and especially camera phones, among young people (Ravindran 2007, 2008). The impetus for their actions came from the Delhi Public School scandal in November 2004. As described in Ravindran (2008), the scandal centered on 2.37 seconds of video shot by a boy making out with his girlfriend, who were both students at an elite public school in Keshavapuram, New Delhi. A few days later, after the couple had broken up, the boy sold the video clip for Rs. 50 to friends. When this became public, both students were expelled from their school. The video clip was then transformed into a hot-selling CD by the pornographic merchants of Palika Bazaar in New Delhi, and lastly a student at IIT Kharagpur posted the content for sale on Bazee.com, the Indian affiliate of ebay. The media pounced on the story, seeking to associate camera phones and its young users with criminality. As a result, Anna University in Chennai, a top-ranking engineering university, used the scandal to ban the use of cell phones on campus and dormitories and conducted raids to enforce the ban (Rediff.com 2004). This practice was quickly emulated by other educational institutions and in 2006, legislation was introduced in the Indian parliament that sought to regulate the use of mobile phones (Ravindran 2008). Young people, in turn, used new media technologies to debate these developments in blogs and discussion forums, as I will explore in greater detail in my internet post next Monday.

Ravindran (2008) uses this incidence to make a larger argument about moral panics associated with camera phones, focusing his study on the (Tamil) vernacular press that is used by moral panic agents as a mouthpiece. Examples from headlines included: “Cell Phone Revolution: Satan in Palm;” “Tragedy Caused by Cell Phone: College Student Arrested for Killing Co-Student,” “Seller of Cell Phone Memory Cards with Obscene Pictures Arrested” and “TADA for Jeans...POTA for Cell Phone! The Plight of Colleges under Excessive Controls” (TADA and POTA refer to the draconian Indian laws against terrorism, which were repealed after political campaigns against them). As these headlines show, the social changes, including the possibilities to subvert strict sexual norms brought about by the use of cell phones are presented as scandalous and borderline criminal practices by parts of Indian society that see themselves as the guardians of traditional customs. The author argues that these dynamics are part of the emergence of an Indian control society that seeks to contain and police the transformations brought about by new media technologies (Ravindran 2007).

Mobile Phones for Development

A significant part of the research into mobile phone use in India focuses on their deployment for development purposes. Specifically, in the economic domain access to mobile phones helps small entrepreneurs overcome information asymmetries in the market place that have traditionally led to their exploitation through middle men. An often-cited example are Kerala fishermen who find out about the best prices for their catch before landing in a particular port (Jensen 2007, Reuben 2007). Donner and Tellez (2008) have undertaken preliminary studies of the emergence of m-banking among small enterprises. Donner (2009) has also investigated the use of mobile phones among small enterprises in India and found a reliance of voice and text messaging. Besides these economic applications, there are also mobile educational games being developed to assist children (and adults) with nonformal learning, as I will examine in Friday’s post on games. Another growing area is the use of mobile and smart phones for healthcare delivery purposes, as was highlighted in a recent report by Vital Wave Consulting authored for the United Nations Foundation (Vital Wave Consulting 2009).  The report listed a number of Indian projects that used mobile phones for education and awareness; remote data collection; remote monitoring; disease and outbreak tracking, and diagnostic and treatment support.

In sum, mobile phones have become pervasive in all parts of Indian society, and especially their use among young people is resulting in profound effects on social norms and cultural conventions.

References Cited:

Chakraborty, S. (2006). Mobile phone usage patterns amongst university students: A comparative study between India and USA. M.S. thesis submitted to University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Donner, J. (2007). The Rules of Beeping: Exchanging Messages Via Intentional “Missed Calls” on Mobile Phones. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 13 (1).

Donner, J. et al. (2008). “Express yourself” and “Stay together”: The middle-class Indian family. In J. Katz (Eds.) Handbook of Mobile Communication Studies. (pp. 325-338). Boston: MIT Press.

Donner, J. and C. Tellez. (2008). Mobile banking and economic development: Linking adoption, impact, and use. Asian Journal of Communication, 18 (4): 318-332.

Donner, J. (2009). Mobile media on low-cost handsets: The resiliency of text messaging among small enterprises in India (and beyond). In G. Goggin and L. Hjorth (Eds.) Mobile technologies: from telecommunications to media. (pp. 93-104). New York and London: Routledge.

Iqbal, T. (2007) Gender inequalities in access and use of telecom at the bottom of the pyramid? Findings from a five country study. Paper presented at International Workshop on ICTs and Development: Experiences from Asia. National University of Singapore, April 2008.

Jensen, R. (2007). The Digital Provide: Information (Technology), Market Performance and Welfare in the South Indian Fisheries Sector.  The Quarterly Journal of Economics 72(3), 879-924.

Kumar, K. and A. Thomas. (2006). Telecommunications and Development: The Cellular Mobile ‘Revolution’ in India and China. Journal of Creative Communications 1: 297.

Ravindran, G. (2008) The Cultural Politics of New Media Modernity in India: Reading the Roles of Moral Panic Agents and Mobile Phone Users. Paper presented at International Workshop on ICTs and Development: Experiences from Asia. National University of Singapore, April 2008.

Ravindran,G (2007) Moral Panics and Mobile Phones: The Cultural Politics of New Media Modernity in India. Paper presented at the Living the Information Society Conference. Makati City, Manila, April 2007.

Reuben, A. (2007) Mobile Phones and Economic Development: Evidence From the Fishing Industry in India. Information Technologies and International Development 4 (1), 5-17.

Sooryamoorthy, R., P. Miller and W. Shrum (2008) Untangling the Technology Cluster: mobile telephony, internet use and social ties. New Media and Society, 10, 729 – 42.

Steenson, M. and J. Donner. (2009). Beyond the personal and private: Modes of mobile phone sharing in urban India. The Reconstruction of Space and Time: Mobile Communication Practices, 1, 231-250.

Tenhunen, S. (2008) Mobile technology in the Village: ICTs, culture, and social logistics in India. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 14 (3), 515-534.

Vital Wave Consulting. (2009). Mhealth for Development: The Opportunity for Mobile Technology for Healthcare in the Developing World. Washington D.C. and Berkshire UK: Un Foundation-Vodaphone Foundation Partnership. Available at http://www.unfoundation.org/global-issues/technology/mhealth-report.html