Cell Phone Nation
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Robin Jeffrey and Assa Doron
Hachette India
308 pages, Rs 499
In 2001, India had 35 million telephones, only 4 million of them mobiles. Ten years later, it had more than 800 million phone subscribers; more than 95 per cent were mobile phones. In a decade, communications in India have been transformed by a device that can be shared by fisherfolk in Kerala, boatmen in Banaras, great capitalists in Mumbai and power-wielding politicians and bureaucrats in New Delhi. This book probes the whole universe of the mobile phone—from the contests of capitalists and governments to control radio frequency spectrum to the ways ordinary people build the troublesome, addictive device into their daily lives.
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