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India Connected: How the Smartphone is Transforming the World's Largest Democracy
Former chief CNN India correspondent and award-wining journalist Ravi Agrawal takes readers on a journey across the Subcontinent, through its remote rural villages and its massive metropolises, seeking out the nexuses of change created by smartphones, and with them connection to the internet.
As always with India, the numbers are staggering: in 2000, 20 million Indians had access to the internet; by 2017, 465 million were online, with three Indians discovering the internet every second. By 2020, India's online community is projected to exceed 700 million, and more than a billion Indians are expected to be online by 2025. In the course of a single generation, access to the internet has progressed from dial-up connections on PCs, to broadband access, wireless, and now 4G data on phones. The rise of low-cost smartphones and cheap data plans has meant the country leapfrogged the baby steps their Western counterparts took toward digital fluency. The results can be felt in every sphere of life, upending traditions and customs and challenging conventions. Nothing is untouched, from arranged marriages to social status to business start-ups, as smartphones move the entire economy from cash-based to credit-based. Access to the internet is affecting the progress of progress itself. As Agrawal shows, while they offer immediate and sometimes mind-altering access to so much for so many, smartphones create no immediate utopia in a culture still driven by poverty, a caste system, gender inequality, illiteracy, and income disparity. Internet access has provided greater opportunities to women and changed the way in which India's many illiterate poor can interact with the world, but it has also meant that pornography has become more readily available. Under a government keen to control content, it has created tensions. And in a climate of hypernationalism, it has fomented violence and even terrorism.
The influence of smartphones on "the world's largest democracy" is nonetheless pervasive and irreversible, and India Connected reveals both its dimensions and its implications.
As always with India, the numbers are staggering: in 2000, 20 million Indians had access to the internet; by 2017, 465 million were online, with three Indians discovering the internet every second. By 2020, India's online community is projected to exceed 700 million, and more than a billion Indians are expected to be online by 2025. In the course of a single generation, access to the internet has progressed from dial-up connections on PCs, to broadband access, wireless, and now 4G data on phones. The rise of low-cost smartphones and cheap data plans has meant the country leapfrogged the baby steps their Western counterparts took toward digital fluency. The results can be felt in every sphere of life, upending traditions and customs and challenging conventions. Nothing is untouched, from arranged marriages to social status to business start-ups, as smartphones move the entire economy from cash-based to credit-based. Access to the internet is affecting the progress of progress itself. As Agrawal shows, while they offer immediate and sometimes mind-altering access to so much for so many, smartphones create no immediate utopia in a culture still driven by poverty, a caste system, gender inequality, illiteracy, and income disparity. Internet access has provided greater opportunities to women and changed the way in which India's many illiterate poor can interact with the world, but it has also meant that pornography has become more readily available. Under a government keen to control content, it has created tensions. And in a climate of hypernationalism, it has fomented violence and even terrorism.
The influence of smartphones on "the world's largest democracy" is nonetheless pervasive and irreversible, and India Connected reveals both its dimensions and its implications.
242 pages, Hardcover
Published November 1, 2018
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
June 8, 2021
The book is a journey of India and its relationship with the rest of the world via the simple medium of technology in recent times. Very well narrated stories of how phones and the Internet have transformed lives in India over all these years, and the massive potential that the nation has for the coming future.
September 22, 2024
Using individual stories, this book walks us through the transformation of India since the inception of smartphones.
The book is good and appropriate for generalists and non-experts.
It might have worked better as a series of TV or YouTube documentaries.
The book is good and appropriate for generalists and non-experts.
It might have worked better as a series of TV or YouTube documentaries.
November 9, 2018
I found this to be a thorough and easy-to-read primer on technology’s evolving role in Indian societ(ies).
Agrawal uses engaging (often funny, at some points sad) stories - supported by research studies and firsthand experiences - to paint a colorful picture of where India has come and where he thinks it’s headed with tech.
Thank you for writing this, Ravi! Highly recommend!
Agrawal uses engaging (often funny, at some points sad) stories - supported by research studies and firsthand experiences - to paint a colorful picture of where India has come and where he thinks it’s headed with tech.
Thank you for writing this, Ravi! Highly recommend!
April 7, 2019
Chi ha paura di Internet? La risposta con due libri uno proveniente dallo smartphone indiano di questo autore e l'altro da dietro alla "muraglia" cinese. Leggi tutto nella recensione sul mio blog https://bit.ly/2FWqqOh
July 16, 2020
Good book. Well researched.
Presents you challenges of mobile phone along with it's opportunities. You get to know how people in India connected through mobile phone and Internet.
Presents you challenges of mobile phone along with it's opportunities. You get to know how people in India connected through mobile phone and Internet.
January 1, 2021
Best book on India.
November 24, 2018
Review coming soon.
March 23, 2019
good topic, but kind of dull.
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews