Cell Phone Nation

by Robin Jeffrey, Assa Doron

The cheap mobile phone is probably the most disruptive communications device in history, and in India its potential to stir up society is breath-taking. The number of phones in India increased more than twenty times in the last ten years, and by the end of 2012 India had more than 900 million mobile phone subscribers. The impact of the simplest version of the device has been deep. Village councils have banned unmarried girls from owning mobile phones. Families have debated whether new brides should surrender them. Cheap mobiles have become photo albums, music machines, databases, radios and flashlights. Religious images and uplifting messages continue to flood tens of millions of phones each day. Pornographers and criminals have found a tantalizing new tool. Political organizations have exploited a resource infinitely more effective than the printing press for carrying messages to workers, followers and voters. Cell Phone Nation masterfully probes the mobile phone universe in India – from the contests of great capitalists and governments to control Radio Frequency spectrum to the ways ordinary people build the troublesome, addictive device into their daily lives.

Genres: Nonfiction

352 pages, Hardcover

First published January 15, 2013

About the author

Robin Jeffrey studied first at the University of Victoria, British Columbia, Canada, obtaining a BA degree. He was awarded a D.Phil in modern Indian history by the University of Sussex, England, in 1973 and had previously worked as a school teacher in Chandigarh, India, for the Regional Institute of English and the Canadian University Service Overseas between 1967 and 1969. His first employment had been in 1963 as a sports writer for a daily newspaper in Canada.

Jeffrey took up a position as a Research Fellow at the Australian National University upon completion of his doctorate. He has taught there during two different periods. He taught politics at La Trobe University, Melbourne, Australia, between 1979 and 2005, where he became a professor. In 2002, he was elected a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Social Sciences, having been previously elected a Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities in 1994.

Jeffrey is an Emeritus Professor of La Trobe University and the Australian National University. He chairs an advisory panel of the Australia India Institute in Melbourne, Australia. He has been a visiting research professor at the Institute of South Asian Studies, at the National University of Singapore, since 2009.

Reviews

[Gourang Ambulkar · Rating 3 out of 5]

Book was written in 2012, so India's love / hate affair has grown leaps and bound since then. Readers born after the 2000s may not even nearly relate to the anecdotes and episodes mentioned as much as reader born prior to 2000s. Nonetheless for the millennial readers this book could be a good primer for the decade before their birth.

That being said, I found the book and the research suffering from lack of a complete sampling representative of India coupled with a mindset bias of the researchers. The former I say because the writers have predominantly considered Banaras as their research group. This has caused them to draw inferences which when extrapolated could not be taken beyond Uttar Pradesh ( if that), let aside India as a whole. The latter ( mindset bias) is the common pitfall that people from English speaking countries suffer , when they decide to write about India. All they see are 3 things 1. Casteism 2. Secondary status to women folk 3. Communal disharmony. And boy do they have a field trip on these 3 points. Honestly, I am sick and tired of read the same mumbo-jumbo revolving around these 3 points. They make it look like India has a pandemic of these 3 and that it is a national disease. I would like to only respond to such writers with the wise wit I read ' All that you claim about India, remember that the exactly opposite is also true.'

Overall a sincere effort was made but given the complexity of India as a nation and the variety of social psyche it would best have been that they had limited their research to a particular province of largely similar social fabric. Nonetheless this book serves as a good read to relive the early days of mobile phones in the 2000s. It took me on a happy trip to nostalgic memories.

[Alka · Rating 3 out of 5]

well written description of how telephony in general and mobile phones in particular have become ubiquitous and omnipotent in India. Backed by individual instances and relevant examples.

[Amandeep Singh · Rating 4 out of 5]

Mobile phones brought a significant disruption in the power structure. It makes things faster, more efficient and provided a matter of hope and promise –‘more democratic’.

[Biju P.R.]

Was useful for my works on cyber space. A well researched book.

[Manisha · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great work indeed!! I have been using cell phone for more than 15 years but didn't know many things about it. The book not only covers the technological aspects of the cell phone industry but also its social impact. It also tells us about great business opportunities that cell phone industry offers. Just a note for those who are planning to read this book. One may skip reading 'Introduction' section as it merely gives an idea about what the writers are going to discuss in each chapter. One might read chapter itself than reading the introduction.