India's Mobile Revolution - the Great Leveler
The story of growth of mobile networks in India is nothing but revolutionary. The booming Indian telecom industry is adding over six million mobile connections every month and it is connecting various sections of society like taxi drivers, paanwallahs, farmers, fisherfolk.
Shashi Tharoor in a recent article published in International Herald Tribune says that the “mobile miracle” has accomplished something India's old Socialist policies talked about but did little to achieve — it has empowered the less fortunate. Hailing the transformation of India in communications as dramatic, he says the cell phone revolution is exciting not only as a sign of India's economic transformation, but as a symptom of something far more important, a change in the attitude of India's governing classes.
“Now to anyone who grew up in pre- liberalization India, that is astonishing. Bureaucratic statism committed a long list of sins against the Indian people, but communications was high up on the list; the woeful state of India's telephones right up to the 1990s, with only eight million connections and a further 20 million on waiting lists, would have been a joke if it wasn't also a tragedy — and a man-made one at that.”
Decrying the government's indifferent attitude to the need to improve communications infrastructure in the pre-liberalisation era, Shashi Tharoor says that perhaps the key contribution of the government has been in getting out of the way — in cutting license fees and streamlining tariffs, easing the overly complex regulations and restrictions that discouraged investors from coming in to the Indian market, and allowing foreign firms to own up to 74 percent of their Indian subsidiary companies.
The story of growth of mobile networks in India is nothing but revolutionary. The booming Indian telecom industry is adding over six million mobile connections every month and it is connecting various sections of society like taxi drivers, paanwallahs, farmers, fisherfolk.
Shashi Tharoor in a recent article published in International Herald Tribune says that the “mobile miracle” has accomplished something India's old Socialist policies talked about but did little to achieve — it has empowered the less fortunate. Hailing the transformation of India in communications as dramatic, he says the cell phone revolution is exciting not only as a sign of India's economic transformation, but as a symptom of something far more important, a change in the attitude of India's governing classes.
“Now to anyone who grew up in pre- liberalization India, that is astonishing. Bureaucratic statism committed a long list of sins against the Indian people, but communications was high up on the list; the woeful state of India's telephones right up to the 1990s, with only eight million connections and a further 20 million on waiting lists, would have been a joke if it wasn't also a tragedy — and a man-made one at that.”
Decrying the government's indifferent attitude to the need to improve communications infrastructure in the pre-liberalisation era, Shashi Tharoor says that perhaps the key contribution of the government has been in getting out of the way — in cutting license fees and streamlining tariffs, easing the overly complex regulations and restrictions that discouraged investors from coming in to the Indian market, and allowing foreign firms to own up to 74 percent of their Indian subsidiary companies.
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