Authors: Robin Jeffrey
Doron’s inquiries
in Lucknow, Banaras and New Delhi yielded similar findings. While many of the street-repairers were trained by their peers and gained proficiency on the job, the most competent had formal training in an institute. In some instances, a family invested in training one member at an institute so that he could pass on the knowledge to his community and relatives. (Doron did not encounter a woman
mistrii
.) But terms such as ‘peer-learning’ and ‘formal training’ needed explaining when used in connection with mobile phones.
The repair industry was highly competitive, and informants explained that they only shared their knowledge with close kin and friends. This had implications for the way they conducted their trade and improved their skills. According to one repairman in Banaras, when he sent mobiles that he was unable to repair to Daal Mandi, he marked the components with microscopic precision so that the repairers in Daal Mandi did not replace them with used parts. He explained that these more skilled repairers jealously guarded their knowledge, restricted access to their shops and barred others from viewing their work. The microscopic marking had another function: to increase his skills in identifying the source of a problem. He would mark several suspect components in the faulty device, and when the expert returned the repaired mobile, he would open it, not only to ensure no used parts had been inserted, but also to try to identify the fault by checking which of the marked components had been tinkered with. ‘Peer learning’ could be by stealth as well as by sharing.
There were varying degrees
of formality in the training process.
35
Informal training could be gained by apprenticing in a shop or learning from peers, while the formal acquisition of skills was more systematic. When Doron asked a seventeen-year-old repairman in a small mobile-phone shop about his training, the young man referred Doron to his teacher located near the city centre of Banaras. The teacher’s place was tucked in a small passageway next to a few photographic and mobile-phone shops. The teacher, Ajeet Singh, was a soft-spoken man in his early thirties who said he gained his skills by watching others and through reading repair manuals. His shop contained all sorts of mobile-phone accessories and parts, but Ajeet spent most of his day carrying out repairs, which he enjoyed because of the challenges they posed. For several years he had conducted courses for young men who wanted to learn repairing. According to Ajeet, mobile repairing was an especially productive option for young men who would otherwise be in limbo or relying on government employment schemes, such as MNREGA (Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act), which offered a wage of only Rs 100 a day. Ajeet had trained more than sixty students; all had found jobs; and some had opened their own repair business. The course lasted about three months, for which he charged Rs 8,000 (US $160). The timing was flexible, but the student attended around three hours a day. The course began with a few weeks of instruction about hardware and identification and repair of faults, followed by study of software repair programs and techniques. After the course the student usually spent a few weeks with Ajeet to gain on-the-job experience.
Ajeet had a number of large books that he regularly ordered from Jaipur’s G Tech publishing and that could also be purchased in Daal Mandi. These soft-cover volumes offered a range of mobile repair solutions from basic tool kits to highly detailed diagrams of mobile-phone circuits, parts and fault-finding techniques. Other books were specific to downloading and software solutions. In Hindi and English, they featured the latest cell-phone models, ranging from Blackberry, Nokia and Samsung to the unbranded China Mobiles.
The software program most commonly used to unlock and revive mobiles was the UFS3, specific to Nokia models. For most other devices, including Samsung, LG and Indian brands, such as Spice and Karbonn, as well as China Mobiles, the commonly used software was known as Spider Man. Ajeet added that one should be cautious when using software as one could easily alter the IMEI number.
36
This could be dangerous since mobile phones attracted both terrorists and security forces, and, in any case, tampering with a phone’s unique identification number was illegal and could result in unwanted attention (
Chapter 8
).
The rapid, widespread
uptake of mobile phones explained why phone repairers were in high demand. To put the mobile phone in perspective, the total production of the Model-T Ford, the product that made the automobile a mass-consumption item in North America, was 15 million cars between 1910 and 1927.
37
By 2012, India had more than 900 million mobile-phone subscribers. Even if the active users at any moment were closer to 600 million, this nevertheless meant that perhaps 1,000 million handsets were in use. And how many lay broken? There was plenty of work for those who could claim to fix cell phones.
Training institutes mushroomed. Perhaps the best known in north India was the franchised Hi-Tech Institute of Advanced Technologies, established in 2004 in Karol Bagh’s Ghaffar Market in Delhi. In 2011 the Hi-Tech Institute had more than two dozen outlets, including one in Nepal. It generated imitators: a host of smaller local institutes that offered similar courses and diplomas, such as Alpha Institute located at the outskirts of Banaras. (See
Illus. 17
). The typical duration of such a course was about three months at a cost of between Rs 10,000–12,000 (US $200–$240). Teaching was in batches of two-hour classes across the day. It was almost exclusively a male profession. Many of the young students attending Alpha Institute were from the towns and villages of Uttar Pradesh and were the first from their families to move out of agriculture. They viewed mobile repair as an attractive job opportunity for which many were willing to cycle up to 40 kilometres (25 miles) a day to and from their villages. They were responding to the mobile-phone industry’s needs and opportunities in similar ways to the young women of the Nokia factory at Sriperumbudur. According to the proprietor of a training institute, all students would find work quickly and with an average salary of Rs 8,000 (US $160) per month. The most successful students advanced to work as engineers in the service centres of brand-name mobiles, such as Motorola and LG, or in the largest and most developed Nokia Care centres.
Raj Kumar found work
in one of the three Nokia centres in Banaras. A former student of Alpha Institute, he explained his progress in the industry. After completing training at the age of twenty-one, he gained experience as an employee for a local mobile repair shop. Raj Kumar went on to work for Motorola for nine months, followed by a shorter period at an LG service centre. He subsequently decided to take the entry exams to become a Nokia technician. The exams, he explained, took place over a period of five days where the applicants were presented with the task of repairing 200 handsets. After passing this exam he began work as a junior technician on Rs 10,000 a month. To update the expertise of employees as new models were released, Nokia conducted one-day workshops usually in one of the main hotels of Banaras. Over the next five years Raj advanced to become head engineer, supervising more than thirty junior engineers and twenty ‘Care officers’ in Banaras’ largest Nokia Care centre in the locality of Sigra. Raj said that later he resigned over differences with a superior, and in March 2010 he opened his own shop selling mobile phones and accessories and offering repairs and servicing.
The intermingling of ‘informal’ and ‘formal’ sectors extended beyond individuals. All the training institutes that Doron visited offered courses that taught how to break into mobile phones and reformat them. The headquarters of north India’s most successful mobile repair institute, Hi Tech, was located in the heart of the grey economy, New Delhi’s Ghaffar Market. There was thus a constant flow between the ‘formal’ and ‘informal’ sectors. Service centres for brand-name phones relied on such institutions to train potential technicians, who might later work for a multi-national company.
Process
‘Mechanics’ referred not just to the people who made, groomed and repaired mobile phones, but also to the processes by which hundreds of millions of ordinary people were initiated into using mobile phones and thus to a closer connection with the offices, paperwork and customs of modern states and consumer capitalism. Because of its cheapness and ubiquity, the mobile phone drew people into such networks and tied them to bureaucratic processes that may hitherto have passed them by. Doron’s experience with a phone in need of care illustrated some of the choices and processes.
THE CARE CENTRE
In north India in
October 2009, Doron’s Nokia N2610 phone, purchased in Australia, stopped working. It was unusually hot in Banaras—the temperatures were above 35 degrees—and it was very dusty. On the advice of friends, Doron opened the phone, cleaned the battery by rubbing it fast and hard against his trousers and left it to air under the ceiling fan for a few hours. But the phone did not respond. He was told he had two options: to visit the Nokia service centre, Nokia Care, or seek help from one of the many
mistriis
. While the latter option was tempting, especially in the name of ‘fieldwork’, Doron decided in favour of the Nokia Care centre. This was, after all, his personal phone with all his contacts, family pictures, appointments and messages accumulated over years.
Nokia was the leading cell-phone brand from the time the mobile phone arrived on the subcontinent at the end of the twentieth century. Its phones had a reputation for quality, reliability and, unlike many competitors, the ability to withstand the rough conditions of India. Nokia also had a wide distribution network and, like other brand names such as Samsung, LG, and Sony, used Bollywood stars as brand ambassadors in its advertising campaigns. Nokia was everywhere. Not surprisingly, once Doron decided to go to Nokia Care, the rickshaw driver knew exactly where to go.
Banaras has three official Nokia Care centres and the nearest was in a building just off the busy Bhelapur crossing. The two-story building housed the well-known Kerala Café frequented by young people and families looking for a cheap, nourishing south Indian meal. But the shops surrounding the Kerala Café, which used to sell a variety of merchandise from home appliances to shoes and clothes, had been replaced by mobile-phone shops selling all things mobile-related, including memory cards, battery chargers, headphones and even a ‘full-body’ lamination designed to reduce the wear and tear of dust, extreme weather and the hazards of working people’s daily lives. The rapid transformation of commercial priorities echoed those in Saharanpur, 900 kilometres west, that Anuradha Aggarwal described to Jeffrey in
Chapter 3
.
Arrows on the wall of
the staircase directed customers to the Nokia Care centre on the second floor. The walls were adorned with posters, and each floor housed smaller shops with signs in Hindi and English proclaiming that they too were ‘authorized service and sales centres’ for Nokia. But Nokia Care was the most celebrated of all the businesses. Several large pot plants led to a lofty cardboard archway behind which was a larger-than-life poster of the Bollywood star Priyanka Chopra, sporting her Nokia cell phone and dressed in a glittering evening gown. At the door a security guard doubled as the person who handed numbered tickets to arriving clients to assign them their place in the queue. The reception area was spacious and clean, its white shining tiles giving it a sense of order. All the customers were men, waiting their turn, seated on blue plastic chairs and gazing at the muted flat-screen TV. (See
Illus. 18
).
The receptionists were the initial contact for the customer. Separated by glass screens, four women registered on their computers the details related to customers and their mobile-phone problems. Behind them was a smoky-white glass barrier, where Doron could glimpse several technicians at work. They too had neatly arranged work stations, at which were laid out instruments to identify problems and repair phones. The customer did not interact with the technicians; all customer care was through the receptionists. Once Doron’s number flashed on the electronic board, he approached one of the receptionists, Sita, a young woman in her early twenties who had recently begun working for Nokia in customer care. She listened attentively to his description of the lead-up to his phone’s sudden death. As she listened, she typed. She took the phone, quickly examined it and passed it across the counter to a technician who dismantled it for appraisal. This took less than five minutes. Sita gave Doron a form to fill out, which called for Doron’s personal details, including name, address and contact number. It specified the cost of the evaluation (Rs 100 or about US $2.00) and an estimated repair cost of Rs 350 (US $7.00).
The roles of women in the
service centres contributed to the notions of a ‘new India’ that glitzy malls and tenants like Nokia Care projected. As receptionists, the women were in positions of some authority; they wore jeans and tee-shirts and addressed customers in formal Hindi rather than the local Bhojpuri of Banaras. This was different from what went on among the
mistriis
in the streets where there were almost no women. Gender, however, also fell into familiar patterns: men did technology; women did meet-and-greet.
Yet the presence of women helped to transform gender assumptions. The pervasiveness of the mobile phone created thousands of wage-earning positions that women filled, and these jobs began to become natural and accepted even in small-town India. The receptionist in a mobile care centre needed to be at least bilingual and fairly well educated. As in the Nokia factory in Sriperumbudur, young women probably cost less and could be seen as less troublesome than men. In a modest way, the need to care for hundreds of millions of cell phones created circumstances a little like those of Rosy the Riveter, the symbolic woman in American industry during the Second World War. The need for workers opened opportunities for women.