Synopses & Reviews
In 2001, India had 4 million cell phone subscribers. Ten years later, that number had exploded to more than 750 million. Over just a decade, the mobile phone was transformed from a rare and unwieldy instrument to a palm-sized, affordable staple, taken for granted by poor fishermen in Kerala and affluent entrepreneurs in Mumbai alike.
The Great Indian Phone Book investigates the social revolution ignited by what may be the most significant communications device in history, one which has disrupted more people and relationships than the printing press, wristwatch, automobile, or railways, though it has qualities of all four.
In this fast-paced study, Assa Doron and Robin Jeffrey explore the whole ecosystem of the cheap mobile phone. Blending journalistic immediacy with years of field-research experience in India, they portray the capitalists and bureaucrats who control the cellular infrastructure and wrestle over bandwidth rights, the marketers and technicians who bring mobile phones to the masses, and the often poor, village-bound users who adapt these addictive and sometimes troublesome devices to their daily lives. Examining the challenges cell phones pose to a hierarchy-bound country, the authors argue that in India, where caste and gender restrictions have defined power for generations, the disruptive potential of mobile phones is even greater than elsewhere.
The Great Indian Phone Book is a rigorously researched, multidimensional tale of what can happen when a powerful and readily available technology is placed in the hands of a large, still predominantly poor population.
Review
Photo by Itai Doron
Review
The Great Indian Phone Book is a wake-up call for anyone intrigued by today's network society. Engagingly written, intelligently researched, and enlivened with memorable anecdotes framed by deft exposition, it offers up a compelling and compellingly readable introduction to a subject of unquestioned significance: the remarkable emergence of the mobile telephone as an agent of change in the developing world. Richard R. John, author of < i=""> Network Nation: Inventing American Telecommunications <>
Review
An engaging and informative analysis of the use of cell phones in India, a nation of over one billion people, where this small device has been a harbinger of big social and economic changes--and an enabler of unbridled entrepreneurship. Tarun Khanna, author of < i=""> Billions of Entrepreneurs: How China and India are Reshaping Their Futures & #8212;and Yours <>
Review
A marvelous, briskly written book, combining a panoptical overview of the broader media landscape with gripping vignettes. Doron and Jeffrey write with insight and journalistic brio, making this book highly accessible to a very wide range of readers. Christopher Pinney, University College London
Review
A comprehensive chronicle of how mobile phones changed Indian life, and in the process, India's economy. Capitalists, ministers, boatmen, farmers, advertising geniuses, porn peddlers, political workers, and tireless salesmen populate this story. Doron and Jeffrey's sociological take on the mobile phone as a great leveller is rich and riveting. Sevanti Ninan, author of < i=""> Headlines from the Heartland <>
Review
This is a fascinating, smart, and erudite volume on how the Indian cell phone industry developed and what its extraordinary growth has meant for the country. It can serve as a kind of vade mecdum for many thousands of interested readers seeking to learn about the subject, whether as amateurs or as specialists entering a new domain. Arvind Rajagopal, New York University
Review
Doron and Jeffrey's landmark study of how the humble mobile phone is changing the culture of Indian democracy in everyday life has no competitors. Their interdisciplinary analysis of popular aspirations and anxieties surrounding mobile telephones will invite and inspire comparative studies set in other emerging economies. A remarkable achievement. Dipesh Chakrabarty, University of Chicago
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Superb...Reminds us how little we have explored the new landscape of opportunity, aspiration and, inevitably, disappointment that mobile phones have opened up in India...[A] lively book. Pankaj Mishra
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In this fine anthropological study, Doron and Jeffrey look at how the introduction and current widespread use of the cell phone has altered life in one of the world's largest countries...This rich study reveals much about modern India and should be read by both students and scholars of technology and South Asia. Bloomberg.com
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The book makes for fascinating reading and probes the entire universe of the mobile phone in India, the upside and the downside. Publishers Weekly
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This is an important book that can usefully be read by students, social scientists, and business managers--indeed, by anyone interested in change and its effects on developing and complex societies. Dilip Bobb - Financial Express
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The Great Indian Phone Book is actually two books in one. The first half is a whirlwind recap of how India was connected, told simply and with a wealth of numbers. The second is an ethnographic study that dives into the intricacies of Indian society without pretending to be comprehensive...The strength of the book lies in its repeated emphasis on technology as something that 'does not eliminate political and social structures, though it may modify them.' Denis OBrien - Finance and Development
Review
The conversation about [the cellphone's] social effects usually takes the form of lamenting obnoxious people who text over dinner or hold one-way conversations on the elevator and expressing angst about 'kids these days' and their addiction to their mobile devices. Fortunately, we now have Assa Doron and Robin Jeffrey's The Great Indian Phone Book, which offers a comprehensive look at what cellphones have meant for India. Their story covers everything from family relations and gender barriers to terrorism and the relations of citizens to the state. Out of what could have been a dry study packed with statistics the authors have managed to write a superb book--informative, insightful, witty--that is essential reading for anyone interested in India, or technological change, or good stories told with clarity and purpose. The Economist
Review
A timely and pioneering contribution to the green shoots of telecom literature...The book has been written for the general reader who is curious to know about the mobile revolution but cannot make sense of the numbers, charts, graphs, jargons, legalese and sophistry surrounding much of the writing on the topic...By representing a wide range of individuals and communities which have been affected by the mobile revolution in India, by judging the impact against the bedrock of existing social, political and economic structures and by suggesting realistic but complicated answers, and yet, keeping the narrative jargon and statistics free, the authors have done a remarkable job. Isaac Chotiner - Wall Street Journal
Review
The Great Indian Phone Book is admirably comprehensive, unexpectedly engaging, and underscored with an appreciation for the country
Doron and
Jeffrey have spent several decades of their professional lives studying as a historian and an anthropologist, respectively.
Subhjayoti Ray - Economic and Political Weekly
Review
A remarkable
tour de force, reflecting thorough research, and impressive knowledge, judgment and enthusiasm.
Swati Pandey - Los Angeles Review of Books
Review
This terrific book on the mobile revolution in India provides not just sound scholarship but also an engaging read for a broader audience, a rare double feat.
Bill Kirkman - Round Table
Review
Over the past ten years the number of mobile phone subscribers in India has grown from a few hundred thousand to as many as 900 million--three subscriptions for every four Indians of any age. It's...a phenomenon with deep and significant cultural effects.
Doron and Jeffrey attempt to chart the pulse of these changes, looking at the history of long-distance communication in India and the ways person-to-person information has been controlled and consumed by both the élites and the masses.
Madanmohan Rao - Your Story
Synopsis
Over just a decade in India, the mobile phone was transformed from a rare, unwieldy instrument to a palm-sized staple that even poor fisherman can afford. Assa Doron and Robin Jeffrey investigate the social revolution ignited by what may be the most significant communications device in history and explore the whole ecosystem of cheap mobile phones.
About the Author
Assa Doron is an Australian Research Council Future Fellow in the Department of Anthropology at the School of Culture, History and Language, Australian National University.Robin Jeffrey is Visiting Research Professor at the Institute of South Asia Studies and Asia Research Institute at the National University of Singapore.
Institute of South Asia Studies and Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore