Jan 7, 2022
Foreign Policy managing editor and former CNN South Asia bureau
chief Ravi Agrawal takes us on a journey across India, through
remote rural villages and massive metropolises, to highlight how
one tiny device - the smartphone - is effecting staggering changes
across all facets of Indian life.
The rise of smartphones, and with them access to the internet, has
caused nothing short of a revolution in India. In the West,
technological advances have progressed step-by-step - from dial-up
Internet connections, to broadband access, to wireless, and now 4G
data on phones. But the vast majority of Indians, particularly
low-income and rural citizens, have leapfrogged straight to the
smartphone era, disrupting centuries of tradition and barriers of
wealth, language, caste, and gender.
As always with India, the numbers are staggering: in 2000, 20
million Indians had access to the internet; by 2017, 465 million
were online, with three Indians discovering the internet every
second - mostly on smartphones. Agrawal shows how widespread
internet use is poised to transform everyday life in India: the
status of women, education, jobs, dating, marriage, family life,
commerce, and governance. Just as the car shaped 20th century
America - with the creation of the Interstate Highway System,
suburbia, and malls - the smartphone is set to shape 21st century
India.
Nothing is untouched, from arranged marriages to social status to
business start-ups, as smartphones move the entire economy from
cash-based to credit-based. Access to the internet is affecting the
progress of progress itself. As Agrawal shows, while they offer
immediate and sometimes mind-altering access to so much for so
many, smartphones create no immediate utopia in a culture still
driven by poverty, a caste system, gender inequality, illiteracy,
and income disparity. Internet access has provided greater
opportunities to women and changed the way in which India's many
illiterate poor can interact with the world, but it has also meant
that pornography and fake news have become much more widespread.
Under a government keen to control content, it has created
tensions. And in a climate of nationalism, it has fomented violence
and even terrorism. What effect is this staggering technological
revolution having on India's ancient political, cultural, and
economic institutions? Keep listening to find out.
Originally published in January of 2019.
Visit YouTube.com/TalksatGoogle to watch the video.