How the smartphone is transforming India
Technology transformed America in the form of the automobile—it connected the vast country through a network of highways and roads, gave people unprecedented mobility, and created the right circumstances for an entrepreneurial population to assert its agency and independence, leading to a thriving economy and culture. Naturally, the car also became a cultural artefact, signifying many things—from coming of age to breaking free.
Noting this in his book India Connected, Ravi Agrawal, managing editor of Foreign Policy magazine, draws parallels between early 20th century America and early 21st century India; between the car and the smartphone. From 2014-17, when he was the chief of CNN’s Delhi bureau, Agrawal had the opportunity to observe, first hand, the vast social and political changes that the smartphone was creating in the country. “I started asking myself ‘could the smartphone be more than just a device? Could it be an enabler of social change?’ America was transformed by the car, by automobile technology; will the smartphone do the same for India?” says Agrawal over Skype.
When he came to work in India after spending eight years abroad with CNN, Agrawal was looking for “the big changes”, and one of the most visible was the proliferation of cheap smartphones and access to data. He recalls watching an ad for Idea Cellular—part of the internet service provider’s “no ulloo banaoing” campaign that showed ordinary people using mobile internet and search to bust lies told by politicians and companies—and wondering if this was the agent of change India needed. “Technology turned out to be a great prism through which to look at India. It was fresh and ongoing—we are right at the start of India’s technological transformation and we don’t know for sure how it’s going to pan out,” says Agrawal. His book, a set of connected essays about real people whose lives have been transformed by the technology of the smartphone, aims to capture some part of this story even as it unfolds and changes every day, with new innovations, new legislations, and fresh data.