One of the most significant aspects of the evolution of communications industry in the country has been the consistent increment of mobile phones.
By Elango Thambiah
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It has redefined how the society functions. Today, it is a need, it is necessity and most importantly it is a reflection of elevated prosperity. The mobility that a cellphone today provides can easily be regarded as a key transformative tool for societal development. No other technology has ever been in the hands of so many people in so many countries in such a short period of time.
An array of factors enabled this transformation of a technology to become a vital tool for empowerment. While handset makers stressed on scale and slashed prices; parallely, service providers aided growth with simple low denomination cash-based prepaid billing systems. The injunction of movements by different stakeholders directed to a unified end result of mobile phones becoming the single most powerful enabler and equaliser tool, especially in addressing traditional bottlenecks in developing countries.
This growth has transformed mobile into a “social object”; fostering social and behavioural changes and empowering under-served groups including people below the poverty line. In India, according to UNU-INWEH report 2014, more people have access to a cellphone than to a toilet and good sanitation. More recently, the country witnessed it’s fastest-ever growth in new mobile-phone connections in the third quarter of 2014, with 18 million net additions.
Going forward, Gartner expects the number of mobile connections in the country to grow by 8% to touch 815 million in 2014 from 755 million connections in 2013.
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In fact, Leonard Waverman, chairman of the economics faculty at London Business School, found that with a 10% increase in the penetration of mobile phones there is an addition of 0.6 percentage points to the economic growth rate of a developing country. The World Bank puts the impact at 0.8 percentage points.
The mobile multiplication paradigm
The country has explored diverse experiences and perspectives of using the mobile space for social and behavioural needs in varied contexts. Some of the initiatives such as Kisan Sanchar, a first-ever interactive platform for farmers bringing them agri-extension information services and E-Mamta, a mother and child tracking system to help reduce infant mortality rate and maternal mortality ratio show immense potential but with a consistent challenge to scale up for greater social and economic impacts.
Interestingly, Tata Teleservices and Tata Institute of Social Sciences’ Mobile Multiplier Study relates mobile phone ownership with both economic and wider measures of social wellbeing in the country. The study reveals that Indian households that own at least one mobile device enjoy 62% higher level of economic prosperity compared to non-mobile-owning households; this premium is even more pronounced with respect to urban communities where mobile phone-owning households are—on average—85% better off in economic terms. In other words, access to communications boosts incomes and makes local economies far more efficient.
Moreover, the Mobile Multiplier Study also finds that the correlation between mobile phone ownership and prosperity is not limited to purely economic measures. Indian states with higher rates of mobile device per household also tend to enjoy significantly higher levels of social well being, based on Human Development (HDI) indices—a composite measure of life expectancy, educational attainment, and per capita income, particularly within India’s urban communities.
Mobile: The ‘Social Object’
Quite evidently, there has not been a social object that had the influence that mobile phones have. Touching million lives at once and with the spread of “anywhere, anytime” communication infrastructures, mobiles have dismantled traditional information hierarchies, which has a ripple effect in terms of social empowerment and inclusive growth. The ‘culture of uniformity’ is growing and with increasing adaptation of smartphones, we have only started to explore all the potential applications and services such as mobile banking, health and safety initiatives, distribution of public service information, and more. All these essentially hold the key to redefining India as a connected knowledge economy.
Mobility is touching various sectors at once. Educational VAS service like ‘English on Mobile’, informative service such as Railways Enquiry, rural radio stations on mobiles Kan Khajura Tesan, amongst others are already delivering critical services to populations in remote areas of the country. Basic healthcare service Sparsh—India’s first sexual and reproductive health services application, delivers advice on puberty, menstruation, pregnancy and contraception. mRupee, is a RBI approved semi-closed and secure prepaid wallet that enables financial transactions in a convenient, electronic form.
With every passing day, it is imminently becoming clearer that power of mobiles is jumping leaps and bounds with the progression of technology and communication. Fortunately, the second wave of mobile revolution in the country has already begun. However, to tap the potential of that, mobile operators will be required to ingrain deeper and wider with the community. All the factors running in tandem with each other will lead to a true revolution with a unanimous aim of an empowered society.
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