Slashdot Mirror
Indian Government Mulls Giving Away Mobile Phones To the Poor
jalfreize writes "The Indian government is finalizing a $1.2 billion plan to hand out free mobile phones to the poorest Indian families (around six million households, according to some estimates). The Times of India reports: 'Top government managers involved in formulating the scheme want to sell it as a major empowerment initiative... While the move will ensure contact with the beneficiaries of welfare programmes (sic) ..., there is also a view the scheme will provide an opportunity for the (government) to open a direct line of communication with a sizable population that plays an active role in polls.'"
So they can track them and listen in on their calls.
"Programmes" is proper British English.
"programme" is the British English spelling, and the predominate form outside of North America.
Just so you know.
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When there is no electricity supply in the villages, this is an innovative way of giving 'power' to the people!
you need to connect with your victims to do it
Someone will have to manufacture the six million phones, batteries, sim cards and power adapters.....
... I won't be surprised if 12 students, in the whole India, ended up getting the free device
But of course, they will be photographed and will appear on the front page news tomorrow
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
Let them eat phone.
-Sonia Antoinette
Chat with other atheists http://secularchat.org
like similar programs in the US, some politician is setting themselves up to get something back. Where in the US it is in the form of campaign contributions given the graft and out right corruption in India I would not doubt there is a whole chain of companies and politicians just giddy with this proposal.
Far too many programs which help the poor merely use their backs and nothing is really done to not keep them poor
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
Sonia Gandhi is India's Jiang Qing. Now they just need a Deng Xiaoping.
It's like Alabama there !!
what's with these Wanker's who quote an article then correct it with a '(sic)'. So the original article had a spellen (sic) mistake, who gives a fcuk (sic) . Live with it. We don't care that you know your proper English. Live with it wanker
Because giving them a phone is so much more important than giving them food, water, sanitation, healthcare, education, electricity, roads
Probably a lot less than the percentage of bigoted bellends on Slashdot who think Muslim = Terrorist
finances, voting, wallet replacement, identification: it is all converging onto cell phones
therefore, for any country concerned with social justice (I guess this excludes the USA then) the poor must have a supplemented device
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
The Indian government is solely responsible for the poverty in India at this point - all the insane rules and regulations prevent people from investing in India. Starting a business in India is ridiculously difficult compared to other parts of Asia, especially China. Indian government is extremely corrupt in a way that prevents competition and prevents business.
Government "providing phones to the poor" - what a ridiculous concept.
Do you know who is the best to provide for the poor? The businessmen who are looking for profit. How come the phones were impossible to own when it was a government monopoly with AT&T for most of the last century, but then when the gov't allowed the competition, all of a sudden the people could finally own phones, phones became cheap, ubiquitous, there were all these new features. From answering machines and radio phones to buttons on the phones, different colours (not just your beige). Eventually fax machines, modems and cell phones and now smart phones.
Everybody has more than one phone, while the first cell phones could only be afforded by the top wealthiest individuals, who could pay a few thousand bucks for one and then hundreds or thousands per month in usage fees.
Cell phones are so cheap today, if competition and business was actually allowed to exist in a FREE market (without government interference) in India, there would be even cheaper phones there, maybe a few dollars for a phone, maybe 1 dollar, who knows.
Government is going to do it? How? It's NOT going to create a better cheaper phone, it's going to pay more for some existing phone, it's going to give some monopoly license to some company that has people in government and it's going to overpay obviously, while interfering with the free market further, reducing the competition with this government subsidy.
Eventually the people in India won't PAY for the cell phone, so it means almost no cell phone retailer will exist in India, and so the cell phones in India will be ridiculously expensive - subsidised by taxes and inflation, borrowing (taxes + interest) and so instead of a couple of bucks for a phone it will be the destruction of economy.
Well, they won't destroy the economy just with this program, it's what they do overall that is the same thing as with these phones that will prevent their economy from rising.
Poverty in India? It's the government that causes is, like all poverty around the world. It's the governments of those nations that cause it and prevent it from being reduced by the competition, free market, vibrant businesses started by individual entrepreneurs without gov't interference.
You can't handle the truth.
Tracking Units.
most practical might be a Granola Case.
jr
This is a smart gesture to secure votes. With secured votes come power. With power comes profit. We all know that profit is the most important thing.
Other people's poverty don't matter. What matters is profit - your own profit. Indian government is not responsible for other people's poverty. They are responsible for their own profits. And they probably have a good chance to profit by giving away phones to the poor, otherwise they wouldn't be considering it.
Giving phone to the poor may be a ridiculous concept to YOU, but that's because you lack the economies of scale or the skills or knowledge the Indian government possess. They most likely have a plan to profit out of it (again, otherwise they wouldn't be considering it)
It's not a complicated strategy: sell cheap/give it away to secure market share, then use market share to make profits back later. Not every company can do that, but this is government we're talking about so they can do a whole lot more.
What would be stupid is if the Indian government figured out a way to profit by giving phones to poor people, but then choose NOT to do it. They would be denying themselves profits.
Oh momma! Thank Vishnu our leaders had the forsight to distribute these phones to curb the hunger of our impoverished. It's a little crunchy, but boil it long enough and it softens up some.
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
For our own protection, of course. With GPS, of course. With an NSA back door, of course. And they will be required to be on all the time, of course.
In East Africa, there's a money transfer service called M-Pesa that is home-grown and wildly popular. It uses cell phones, and everywhere you go there are green shops and kiosks that allow you to put in or take out cash. A lot of the people using it have never had a bank account before, and may never have one. From this point of view, a cell phone is more of a necessity and not a toy as it is in the U.S.
For telephony, a lot of the third world leapfrogged over land-lines and went straight to cell phones.
Find free books.
No Electricity AND No coverage! yet Kenyans[1] in those out ward places still use mobile phones, and are better off with them.
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First, the logistics. The farmers send a boy to the nearest city with electricity and coverage, on a bicycle carrying all their cellphones. He leaves them to charge at one of the various charges stations that have popped up there, which ask for a few cents per charge.
Then the boy can reply to any SMS as per instruction. Also, he carries out M-Pesa[2] transactions and reloads them on their behalf.
He comes back at the end of the day, cellphones charged and loaded, and full of new SMS, which the farmers can read and create replies for.
And then it's a fresh new day, and boy sets off again....
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Secondly, the reasons. Basically, the cellphone has become combination of a telegram and wallet.
The SMS acts as a telegram, farmer can communicate with market dealers in big cities far more quickly and easily, then they could have if they had to rely on older means, which meant trudging all the over multiple forms of transportation, often just for a minor piece of information.
The other is the mobile wallet. While you folk in the west have been quibbling over how to slice the pie (and we in the east are just to damn stupid to care) Africans just said "Fuck this!", went ahead and created a true, and *simple* mobile wallet solution. Now farmers can send and receive money far more quickly and easily.
The best part of the article[2]:
Ha! In your face suckers! Now try charging 150 to send a 100! (true story, banks here ask a minimum 150 for a bank draft :( )
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So, in reply to the common refrain of "WAHHH NO ELECTRICITY", I humbly propose that where there is a will, there is a way to find that power source.
I am under no presumption that this is *not* merely and election ploy, or that there won't be massive corruption.
However, if even if one poor soul gets a dumbphone, and that phone saves him the regular commute to a bigger city just to hear "SEND 150 CRATES BY TUESDAY", I think that would a be a job well done
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If you wish to know more please read this article and watch the videos there in:
http://conversations.nokia.com/2011/02/02/eyes-on-africa-videos-12/
http://conversations.nokia.com/2011/02/03/eyes-on-africa-videos-22/
Lest I be accused of being a Nokia shill, I merely linking because this happens to be a nice collective resource on this issue; you can benefit just as well on a Samsung dumb phone.
Also, IIRC, Chinese crap-phones were selling by the bucket-loads there, since if all you need them is for SMS, they are very cost affective.
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[1]:Not limited to Kenyans of course, this is becoming popular all over Africa and other regions with poor communication.
[2]: "a mobile-phone based money transfer service"; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M-Pesa
I am an ACCA student. Got a query on Accountancy/Finance? Maybe I can help!
I guess they all have too much of those, uh?
none
Briliiant! Hopefully they this and the direct voting technology will trickle down to the less developed world. Like the US
"Last year, a federal program paid out $1.6 billion to cover free cell phones and the monthly bills of 12.5 million wireless accounts. The program, overseen by the FCC and intended to help low-income Americans, is popular for obvious reasons, with participation rising steeply since 2008, when the government paid $772 million for phones and monthly bills.
http://moneyland.time.com/2012/02/08/how-to-get-the-government-to-cover-your-cell-phone-bills/
This is bullshit. We should not be paying for phones, TV, Internet access, etc. All we do is add more and more people to government programs. When was the last time that the US government had a successful program to get people off of government assistance?
We cannot continue down this path. It is not sustainable.
"A plan fiendishly clever in its intricacies"- Homer Simpson
The phones have to work in Monsoon rain(no sun, waterproof) so have to include hand-cranking. They have to work in Summer (dust-proof, no electricity), so have to be solar-chargable. Should have radio & flash-light.
They're doing this so when the poor revolt the government will know who's involved and squash them with ease.