Cell Phone Nation: How Mobile Phones Have Revolutionized Business, Politics and Ordinary Life in India (28 page)

Illus. 20: Tied to the state. Getting a SIM card requires filling out a form, attaching a photograph and providing personal details. (Photo: Assa Doron).

Illus. 21: Sea cells in south India. Kerala fisherman and their phones gained early fame. (Photo:
The Hindu
, 17 May 2012, with permission and thanks).

Illus. 22: Banking comes to a shop near you. An EKO bank outlet (large white signboard, top centre) and Fast Moving Consumer Goods. New Delhi. February 2011. (Photo: Assa Doron).

Illus. 23: Everybody’s doing it. From Airtel’s smooth middle classes to nicely posed rickshaw pedallers. Chandigarh. May 2009. (Photo: Ajay Varma, Reuters, with permission).

Illus. 24: Communication technology, old style. Kanshi Ram, organizational genius of the Bahujan Samaj Party, on a cycle
yaatra
. (Photo:
http://www.ambedkartimes.com/sahib_kanshi_ram.htm
Photographer and original place of publication unknown).

Illus. 25: SMSing to the faithful. Message to Bahujan Samaj Party workers calling on them to celebrate the 75th birthday of their late founder, Kanshi Ram, in 2009. Blue is the party colour—thus ‘Blue Salute’. (Photo: Robin Jeffrey, June 2010).

Illus. 26: Communication technology, Mark II. Akhilesh Yadav takes up Kanshi Ram’s bicycle and adds a mobile phone for the 2012 election campaign in Uttar Pradesh. (
India Today
, 5 March 2012, with permission).

Illus. 27: Communication technology, Mark III. Tribal women send news items to CGNet Swara. (Photo: Purusottam Singh Thakur and CGNet Swara, with permission and thanks).

Illus. 28: Phoning or broadcasting? Tribal woman sends message to SGNet Swara. (Photo: Purusottam Singh Thakur and CGNet Swara, with permission and thanks).

Illus. 29: Buying vegetables? Unsettling society? Mobile phones force families to make choices. Why didn’t she ring her vegetable seller and ask him to deliver? Banaras. October 2009. (Photo: Assa Doron).

Illus. 30: Who owns the mobile? India’s leading mobile phone magazine calls itself
My Mobile
and puts phone-wielding women on its cover. Elsewhere, families agonized about whether women should have phones. (
My Mobile
, Hindi edition, September 2011, with permission and thanks).

Illus. 31: A woman with a phone excited some people. Bhojpuri video clip,
Mobile Wali: Woman with a Mobile Phone
. Singers: Manoj Tiwari, ‘Mridul’ and Trishna. Publisher: WAVE VCD. (Accessed from YouTube on 23 July 2012. Screen dump by Paul Brugman, Australian National University).