Anisha Singh

 
Call of progress
 
The penetration of mobile phones is complete and wide spread across social strata, religions, faiths and genders. Initially, possessing a mobile handset was considered to be a status symbol, a mobile phone was as much a reason to celebrate as a new car.
 
About 17 years ago, in 1995, India’s first mobile phone call was made by the late Jyoti Basu (West Bengal’s CM). Basu made the historic call to the then Union Communications Minister Sukh Ram. The handset was a clunky one and call rates were as high as Rs. 32 per minute. But what began with that call, a decade ago, has led to one of the most impactful transformations for modern India: The Mobile revolution.
 
Today India has more than 920 million phone subscribers, 1 making it the world’s second largest mobile market after China. In the metros, about 57% of Indian youth access the internet using their mobile phones. Further, mobile internet in India has seen a spurt in growth over the past few years. While in 2009, 53.5 million subscribers accessed internet through their mobile phones, by 2012 this number is expected to rise to about 200 million.
 
The sheer speed of adoption is a testimony, in itself, to what I think is one of the greatest silent revolutions witnessed in our country. The penetration of mobile phones is complete and widespread across social strata, religion, faith and gender. Initially, possessing a mobile handset was considered to be a status symbol, a mobile phone was as much a reason to celebrate as a new car. Now everyone has a mobile – travelling in the hinterland, you can find men talking into their handsets while manoeuvring tractors in the field, women chatting in shy tones, with their pallu hiding their faces. Whether you want a phone with Swarovski embellishments or one for as low as Rs. 1,000, the user is spoilt for choice. Today, your neighbourhood grocery store is just a phone call away, your phone helps you share your life with friends and family on social networking sites, you can listen to music, get great shopping deals, plan holidays, book movie tickets, hire cabs, make banking transactions and search for practically anything under the sun. The world seems to have shrunk into our palms in the form of this humble rectangular box.
 
But has greater mobile usage made us more materialistic and consumeroriented? You see school kids now pestering their parents for the latest iphone or HTC. The more I think about it, the more I wonder: has the evolution of the mobile moved from ‘utility’ to ‘status’? Could it be there are examples of mobile innovation for the greater good? Search the net (use your phone for that!) and you will be surprised – there are many examples of how people are working towards making a difference in the lives of others through something as simple and as basic as a mobile phone.
 
There have been ground-breaking health initiatives using a basic mobile phone, as a means of communication as well as a data collection device, such as this one: thousands of rural health workers go door-todoor, gathering information on pregnant women and infants, and send this to the State Rural Health Mission, using their mobile phones. This data is collated into a centralised repository and used to alert rural health workers – through SMS – to ensure they reach out to the pregnant women and mothers regarding medicines to be taken or immunization dates.
 
An enterprising duo has set up India’s first mobile news and information service for rural India – which brings to people information useful and relevant for them and that, too, in their local language. Maybe electricity and education haven’t reached these remote villages, but through the ‘Gaon ki Awaaz’, poor villagers have access to information that can improve or enrich their lives. There’s even a ‘kabadiwala’ who runs an SMS based solution that connects junk dealers with households and recyclers.
 
There are mobile initiatives that now help solving water problems, child trafficking and many other issues that require mass mobilization. Companies or agencies that have developed these apps or mobile solutions weren’t looking to do cutting-edge cool stuff. They looked at a major problem that existed, took a simple prevalent communication tool and innovated to solve that problem. I cite these examples to bring home the fact that the humble mobile phone, or ‘not so’ humble in some cases, is not just a device for communication on a personal level or a status symbol for a select few. Not anymore.
 
Not evermore. We’re now in an m-evolution that has made the mobile phone an agent of change, bringing together people, ideas and initiatives and that has the power to boost India’s growth story. It offers the potential to do much more. This is one opportunity we should all look at grabbing, the call of progress we should look forward to answering!
 
Anisha Singh
Founder and CEO of mydala.com,
India’s leading internet and mobile marketing platform connecting local merchants to their target consumers.