India is already leading the way in biometric data covereage, now they want to give away hundreds of millions of mobile phones to the poor. Call me a cynic, but I don't think it's being done in the interests of the poor.

www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/...les-to-the-poor.html

The Indian government is considering plans to give millions of mobile phones to its poorest families to help lift them from penury.

Officials believe the scheme, called *Har Hath Mein Mobile*, or A Mobile in Every Hand, could revolutionise government services to the poor by offering more than 200 million people without phone connections access to banking services and information sites which could help boost their incomes. They also believe it could help protect their state benefits from corrupt civil servants.

Dr Montek Singh Ahluwalia, a senior advisor to India's prime minister Dr Manmohan Singh confirmed the idea was aimed the millions of poor families in rural India.

Telecom ministry officials told industry figures the scheme will cost just under a billion pounds and will initially be targeted at six million 'below poverty level' families living on less than £63 per month. It is expected to feature in the Congress-led government's manifesto for the 2014 election campaign.

The scheme has been partly inspired by Kenya's M-PESA mobile phone banking system which enables poor people to transfer money and receive payments via sms text messages. Similar schemes in India have been hampered because millions have no official identity documentation.

The Mobile in Every Hand Scheme however will benefit from the government's ambitious unique identification project to record the biometric details of every Indian and issue them a secure number to help them access government services online. More than 200 million people have already been given new ID numbers.

India has undergone a mobile phone revolution in the last decade with cheap Chinese-made mobile phones and 'pay as you go' services encouraging millions of poor rickshaw pullers and domestic servants to subscribe.

Despite chronic electricity shortages, more than three-quarters of its 1.2 billion people have mobile phones and use them to boost their incomes.

Rickshaw pullers have established cellphone booking services in some cities, while small-holders use them to get text message weather forecasts which have helped boost crops.

Telecommunications analyst Anil Kumar, who runs the independent Telecom Watchdog, said government officials had discussed the scheme with him and that they expected it to be operational by the end of 2013 – just as election campaigning begins. "The idea is give all below the poverty line a mobile handset with 200 free talk minutes. They have yet to work out the details, but 2014 is an election year and it will take a year to invite tenders. It is mainly a political matter for them," he said.

Anti-poverty campaigners gave the proposals a mixed reception, welcoming it as an "empowering move" but also complaining that more pressing priorities had been overlooked. "We have already been tagged as a nation with more mobile phones than toilets. Basic facilities like health care and food security should be available to poor people before planning to give them mobile phones," said Harsh Mandar, activist and Supreme court's special commissioner for the Right to Food.

Professor Anil Gupta, one of India's leading experts on 'frugal innovations' for the poor, said the proposal was "potentially revolutionary" and could help reduce corruption.

"It could be used for mobile banking. Camera phones could be used to record whether [government school] teachers come to school every day – a way of monitoring the bureaucracy. People could use them to create markets for things they have to sell," he said.

Clever way to market it, I suppose. Jobs as good as done, really.

Course, clean running water and electricity might make for a better start, but whatever..

Ab Origine wrote:
Don't forget food. And housing.

Sanitation?

But apart from clean running water and electricity, food, housing, sanitation, I suppose having a mobile phone is every poor person's dream.

Oh and education.

www.sanctumzone.co.uk/forum/General/2857...hen-TSHTF.html#28692

Theres no prediction here tbh, its downright obvious innit.

Anthony65 wrote:
I know it is mine, anthony, though technically, I'm not sure that I even qualify as 'poor'.

andy, you are a pretty sharp guy.

hundreds of millions, thats quite a lot. some very rich people are going to get richer is whats going to happen.

batou wrote:
Man's a witch, innit?

Maybe they are trying to kill off the poor through cell phone induced brain tumors.

K-Bone wrote:
Quite possibly, k. That and pure profit aside, I do believe there is a wider scheme at play here, though. What good is a country full of poor people that you know nothing about and who cannot obtain credit for themselves?

I like the way they don't even bother with pretending to address the basics any more. You could be forgiven for thinking that they're in some kind of hurry.

Ab Origine wrote:
Like most of the dastardly schemes of the shit that floats this proposal probably works on different levels.

It could even be that there will be a mini boom for mobile manufacturers (and more pressure on the rare elements that needed for production and found only in China).

Control is sure to be a factor. India is already pushing through biometric ID cards for everyone. Again, not the top priority of desperately poor people.

Giving everyone a mobile phone means that they need to expand the cell networks across the country. Again, big business, but again, also a possible form of control. How much power will be required for all those new masts / base stations? India just had a power cut across the northern half of the country.

Not to be underestimated in my opinion is the effect of the enhanced networks on the local environment and weather patterns. Microwave antennas give off positive electrical charge / positive ions. On the scale required this could really f*** up the climate in India. I recently spoke to someone who knows Bangalore, the IT hub in southern India. Bangalore used to be famed for it's pleasant climate. Not any more apparently. They've cut down lots of trees and replaced them with roads, houses and of course lots of mobile phone masts.

If India has poor harvests due to bad weather then the global food situation will get much more acute. Food or phones? What's the priority?

Ab Origine wrote:
Just don't dunk me in the river yet :p

Anthony65 wrote:
Natural places give off negative ions and you feel peaceful when your around places like waterfall's and forests, inadvertently or by design they are fucking up the planet and us as well to many positive ions stress people out.

Makes me wonder with all these people doing zombie type things and posting comments on twitter which are derogatory is caused by this.

Here in Australia the good old house phone is on the way out, it's hard to buy a normal phone these days, even the cordless ones you plug into the wall are becoming obsolete as the batteries dont last, pisses people off. The pricing plans for mobile phones are cheap too which is an incentive to switch over.

I was discussing this with Mrs boots yesterday, what if there is a power cut and there is a CME which knocks out the communication towers? People are going to be stuffed but if you have a landline you can still get through to someone, not with mobiles. also mobiles have a chip in them and the Gov can track you if they want, plus even if they are switched off any alphabet agency can still listen into your convo, if they so desire.

This is my 'phone'. There are many like it, but this one is mine.

Nice looking phone, brings back memories

I'm going to get me one of those phones they use in corporate office's when they sell them off to upgrade, cant keep an old man down

Ab Origine wrote:
I would have imagined your phone to look like this:


But I do love the one you have! Reminds me of film noir.