India workers use cell phones to dial in prosperity
India workers use cell phones to dial in prosperity
Explosion in number of subscribers fuels economic boon and productivity for many who had previously struggled to make a living
By Kevin Sullivan
WASHINGTON POST
PALLIPURAM, India - Babu Rajan pointed off the starboard bow and shouted: "There! There!"
In choppy, gray seas four miles from shore near India's tropical southern tip, Rajan spotted the tinselly sparkle of a school of sardines. He ordered his three dozen crewmen to quickly drop their 5-ton net overboard.
Within five minutes, the cell phone hanging around his neck rang.
"Hallo!" he shouted, struggling to hear over the big diesel engines of his 74-foot boat, Andavan. "Medium sized! Medium sized!" he said, estimating the haul for a wholesale agent calling from port, who had heard by cell phone from other skippers that Rajan had just set his nets.
Minutes later Rajan's phone rang again -- another agent at a different port. Then one of Rajan's regular customers called: Is it a good catch? When will you be here?
"It's good! But let me finish here!" Rajan shouted, sweating as he helped to haul in the huge red net.
He hung up and laughed: "When I have a big catch, the phone rings 60 or 70 times before I get to port."
The cell phone is bringing new economic clout, profit and productivity to Rajan and millions of other poor laborers in India, the world's fastest-growing cell phone market.
At the beginning of 2000, India had 1.6 million cell phone subscribers; today there are 125 million -- three times the number of land lines in the country. With 6 million new cell phone subscribers each month, industry analysts predict that in four years nearly half of India's 1.1 billion people will be connected by cell phone.
That explosive growth has meant greater access to markets, information about prices and new customers for tens of millions of Indian farmers and fishers.
A convenience taken for granted in wealthy nations, the cell phone is putting cash in the pockets of people for whom a dollar is a good day's wage. And it has made market-savvy entrepreneurs out of sheep herders, rickshaw drivers and even the acrobatic men who climb up palm trees to harvest coconuts here in Kerala state.
"This has changed the entire dynamics of communications and how they organize their lives," said C.K. Prahalad, an India-born business professor at the University of Michigan, who has written extensively about how commerce -- and cell phones -- are used to combat poverty.
"One element of poverty is the lack of information," Prahalad said. "The cell phone gives poor people as much information as the middleman."
For less than a penny a minute -- the world's cheapest cell phone call rates -- farmers in remote areas can check prices for their produce. They call around to local markets to find the best deal. They also track global trends using cell phone-based Internet services that show the price of pumpkins or bananas in London or Chicago.
Indian farmers use camera-phones to snap pictures of crop pests, then send the photos by cell phone to biologists who can identify the bug and suggest ways to combat it. In cities, painters, carpenters and plumbers who once begged for work door-to-door say they now have all the work they can handle because customers can reach them instantly by cell phone.
T.V. Ramachandran, director general of the Cellular Operators Association of India, a private industry group, said construction of new cell towers is expanding most rapidly in rural areas, and India's coverage area has tripled in the past year. He said cell phone growth is driven by the young -- more than half the population is younger than 25 -- and, increasingly, by people in neglected rural areas.
In a country where the World Bank calculates that nearly 80 percent of the population lives on less than $2 a day, Ramachandran said cell phones have become the "poor man's phone."
Rajan said the dealers who buy his wares don't necessarily like the new balance of power, but they are paying better prices to him and thousands of other fishers who work this lush stretch of coastline. "They are forced to give us more money because there is competition," said Rajan, who estimated that his income has at least tripled to an average of $150 a month since 2000, when cell phones began booming in India. He said he is providing for his family in ways that his fisherman father never could, including a house with electricity and a television.
"When I was a kid we never had enough money for clothes and books, so we never really went to school," said Rajan, 50. "Now everything is different."
At 5:30, Rajan's cell phone rang for the first of dozens of times that day. Rajan pulled it out of his breast pocket, where he keeps it at the end of a red cord around his neck in a plastic protective case. The captain of another boat cutting through the dark sea, visible only by its red and green running lights, was calling to plot strategy.
The skippers agreed that they would steam about 14 miles offshore, where Rajan's crew had landed almost $2,000 worth of sardines two days earlier, a great catch. In a flurry of calls, Rajan and other skippers were all clearly worried because yesterday had been a disaster. After 12 hours at sea under a broiling sun, nobody had caught enough sardines to make a decent lunch for a cat.
"I can't imagine life without my phone," said Rajan, who has curly hair, a graying beard and a body hardened by work. Before cell phones, he said, he couldn't communicate with other boat captains. Few of them could afford expensive marine radios, so if someone hit a massive school of sardines, there was no way to alert friends on other boats.
And if the boat broke down, as they frequently do, Rajan said he would have to wait at sea and hope that help happened along. Now he can call his mechanic, who also carries a cell phone, to ask for emergency service. And if the crew has a family emergency on shore, the news arrives instantly -- as it did a week ago when a crewman's father-in-law died suddenly.
"We should have had this power a long time ago," Rajan said as a pink-orange sunrise peeked through the clouds.
After nine hours at sea, at 1:44 p.m., Rajan was ready to give up for the day. The wind was kicking up a choppy sea, making it hard to spot the ripples and sparkles made by schools of sardines. Then, from his perch high in the bow, he spotted them about 50 yards off the bow. He jumped up and down and shouted to the crew members, who scrambled to their places.
By 3 p.m., the open boat was loaded with fish and the Andavan turned toward port, an hour away. Standing on the deck soaked with sweat, Rajan started returning phone calls. He dialed the number of the wholesale agent at his home port, who offered about $13 for each 110-pound box of fish -- about 12 cents a pound.
Rajan agreed to the deal. He said if his load had been bigger and it had been earlier in the day, he would have called around to check prices at other ports. But he said for a smallish load late in the day, the first price offered was fair. And he said the dealer was forced to offer a decent price, knowing that Rajan could still go elsewhere. As insurance, Rajan returned the call of the other dealer who had called him, just to keep good relations for another day.
Rajan said that without his phone, his catch might have gone to waste. Because he called ahead to the port, buyers there knew that he was coming, what kind of fish he had and the size of his catch. In the past, Rajan said, he would sometimes arrive at port late in the day only to find that all the buyers had gone home, unaware that another boat was coming. His catch would go unsold and he and his crew would go unpaid.
"Even if it takes us one or two hours to get there, they will still be waiting for us," Rajan said, smoking a cigarette on the Andavan's deck. "It was never like that before."
Explosion in number of subscribers fuels economic boon and productivity for many who had previously struggled to make a living
By Kevin Sullivan
WASHINGTON POST
PALLIPURAM, India - Babu Rajan pointed off the starboard bow and shouted: "There! There!"
In choppy, gray seas four miles from shore near India's tropical southern tip, Rajan spotted the tinselly sparkle of a school of sardines. He ordered his three dozen crewmen to quickly drop their 5-ton net overboard.
Within five minutes, the cell phone hanging around his neck rang.
"Hallo!" he shouted, struggling to hear over the big diesel engines of his 74-foot boat, Andavan. "Medium sized! Medium sized!" he said, estimating the haul for a wholesale agent calling from port, who had heard by cell phone from other skippers that Rajan had just set his nets.
Minutes later Rajan's phone rang again -- another agent at a different port. Then one of Rajan's regular customers called: Is it a good catch? When will you be here?
"It's good! But let me finish here!" Rajan shouted, sweating as he helped to haul in the huge red net.
He hung up and laughed: "When I have a big catch, the phone rings 60 or 70 times before I get to port."
The cell phone is bringing new economic clout, profit and productivity to Rajan and millions of other poor laborers in India, the world's fastest-growing cell phone market.
At the beginning of 2000, India had 1.6 million cell phone subscribers; today there are 125 million -- three times the number of land lines in the country. With 6 million new cell phone subscribers each month, industry analysts predict that in four years nearly half of India's 1.1 billion people will be connected by cell phone.
That explosive growth has meant greater access to markets, information about prices and new customers for tens of millions of Indian farmers and fishers.
A convenience taken for granted in wealthy nations, the cell phone is putting cash in the pockets of people for whom a dollar is a good day's wage. And it has made market-savvy entrepreneurs out of sheep herders, rickshaw drivers and even the acrobatic men who climb up palm trees to harvest coconuts here in Kerala state.
"This has changed the entire dynamics of communications and how they organize their lives," said C.K. Prahalad, an India-born business professor at the University of Michigan, who has written extensively about how commerce -- and cell phones -- are used to combat poverty.
"One element of poverty is the lack of information," Prahalad said. "The cell phone gives poor people as much information as the middleman."
For less than a penny a minute -- the world's cheapest cell phone call rates -- farmers in remote areas can check prices for their produce. They call around to local markets to find the best deal. They also track global trends using cell phone-based Internet services that show the price of pumpkins or bananas in London or Chicago.
Indian farmers use camera-phones to snap pictures of crop pests, then send the photos by cell phone to biologists who can identify the bug and suggest ways to combat it. In cities, painters, carpenters and plumbers who once begged for work door-to-door say they now have all the work they can handle because customers can reach them instantly by cell phone.
T.V. Ramachandran, director general of the Cellular Operators Association of India, a private industry group, said construction of new cell towers is expanding most rapidly in rural areas, and India's coverage area has tripled in the past year. He said cell phone growth is driven by the young -- more than half the population is younger than 25 -- and, increasingly, by people in neglected rural areas.
In a country where the World Bank calculates that nearly 80 percent of the population lives on less than $2 a day, Ramachandran said cell phones have become the "poor man's phone."
Rajan said the dealers who buy his wares don't necessarily like the new balance of power, but they are paying better prices to him and thousands of other fishers who work this lush stretch of coastline. "They are forced to give us more money because there is competition," said Rajan, who estimated that his income has at least tripled to an average of $150 a month since 2000, when cell phones began booming in India. He said he is providing for his family in ways that his fisherman father never could, including a house with electricity and a television.
"When I was a kid we never had enough money for clothes and books, so we never really went to school," said Rajan, 50. "Now everything is different."
At 5:30, Rajan's cell phone rang for the first of dozens of times that day. Rajan pulled it out of his breast pocket, where he keeps it at the end of a red cord around his neck in a plastic protective case. The captain of another boat cutting through the dark sea, visible only by its red and green running lights, was calling to plot strategy.
The skippers agreed that they would steam about 14 miles offshore, where Rajan's crew had landed almost $2,000 worth of sardines two days earlier, a great catch. In a flurry of calls, Rajan and other skippers were all clearly worried because yesterday had been a disaster. After 12 hours at sea under a broiling sun, nobody had caught enough sardines to make a decent lunch for a cat.
"I can't imagine life without my phone," said Rajan, who has curly hair, a graying beard and a body hardened by work. Before cell phones, he said, he couldn't communicate with other boat captains. Few of them could afford expensive marine radios, so if someone hit a massive school of sardines, there was no way to alert friends on other boats.
And if the boat broke down, as they frequently do, Rajan said he would have to wait at sea and hope that help happened along. Now he can call his mechanic, who also carries a cell phone, to ask for emergency service. And if the crew has a family emergency on shore, the news arrives instantly -- as it did a week ago when a crewman's father-in-law died suddenly.
"We should have had this power a long time ago," Rajan said as a pink-orange sunrise peeked through the clouds.
After nine hours at sea, at 1:44 p.m., Rajan was ready to give up for the day. The wind was kicking up a choppy sea, making it hard to spot the ripples and sparkles made by schools of sardines. Then, from his perch high in the bow, he spotted them about 50 yards off the bow. He jumped up and down and shouted to the crew members, who scrambled to their places.
By 3 p.m., the open boat was loaded with fish and the Andavan turned toward port, an hour away. Standing on the deck soaked with sweat, Rajan started returning phone calls. He dialed the number of the wholesale agent at his home port, who offered about $13 for each 110-pound box of fish -- about 12 cents a pound.
Rajan agreed to the deal. He said if his load had been bigger and it had been earlier in the day, he would have called around to check prices at other ports. But he said for a smallish load late in the day, the first price offered was fair. And he said the dealer was forced to offer a decent price, knowing that Rajan could still go elsewhere. As insurance, Rajan returned the call of the other dealer who had called him, just to keep good relations for another day.
Rajan said that without his phone, his catch might have gone to waste. Because he called ahead to the port, buyers there knew that he was coming, what kind of fish he had and the size of his catch. In the past, Rajan said, he would sometimes arrive at port late in the day only to find that all the buyers had gone home, unaware that another boat was coming. His catch would go unsold and he and his crew would go unpaid.
"Even if it takes us one or two hours to get there, they will still be waiting for us," Rajan said, smoking a cigarette on the Andavan's deck. "It was never like that before."
