The Hindu Business Line : <italic1>Chalta phirta</italic1> PCO

HITHERTO we thought a mobile phone was so called because unlike a landline phone, we could carry it with us in our pocket wherever we went. The distinction between landline and mobile has now got blurred in a novel sense in Rajasthan where Shyam Telecom, as a "philanthropic exercise", has equipped more than 200 rickshaw drivers, including women and differently-abled, with a mobile payphone, battery, a billing machine and a printer, and launched them as chalta phirta public call offices.

Reportedly, it has enabled a good number of the drivers to become financially independent, capable of earning Rs 6,000-Rs 9,000 per month, on a take of 20 per cent on the charge for every call. The company itself invests Rs 75,000 on buying the tricycle rickshaw, and leaves the drivers free to choose the areas best for the business, which is said to be doing so well that the promoters are thinking of adding Internet-connected laptops to the rickshaws and mounting wirelessly connected computers on camels for use in the desert!

There is no doubt that the success of the enterprise owes much to the craving and craze for instant communication that is sweeping India, as evidenced by the burgeoning number of mobile phones of all kinds of makes with exotic features such as recording facility, video cameras and connectivities to Internet. They are getting to be sleeker, and within affordable price ranges, enabling people to communicate to anyone from anywhere, and at any time. Their popularity is such that the number of users is expected to jump from the present 25 million to 300 million in the next five years.

Of course, it is leading to some ludicrous, and occasionally obnoxious, situations. In every public thoroughfare or public transport, one invariably comes across persons with one palm to the ear and apparently talking to themselves. If this habit continues too long, and gets embedded in the genes, we may even face the bizarre prospect of babies being born in a similar pose! Like chain snatching, snatching of mobiles protectively dangling from the neck is becoming commonplace. News of school and college kids using mobiles for sending pornographic pictures recently sent shock waves round the country. All I can say is: You ain't seen nothing yet!

B. S. Raghavan

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