Professor.Dr.Tapati Basu   

THE MOBILE MANIA IN INDIA:

OF SMS REVOLUTION,

MMS CONTROVERSIES

AND

WARDROBE MALFUNCTIONS

A Research Paper

Prof. Dr. Tapati Basu

Head of the Department of

Journalism and Mass Communication

University of Calcutta,

Senate House.

87/1,College Street.

Kolkata-700 073, INDIA.

And

Sujata Mukherjee

UGC Senior Research Fellow

Department of Journalism & Mass Communication

Table of Contents                                                                      Page No.

Acknowledgement……………………………………………………………3

Introduction…………………………………………………………………  4

Chapter I

The Mobile Phone Culture in India: Youth Drives the Mobile Revolution

……………………………………………………………………….……….12

Chapter II

Shaping the Future Mobile Information Society: The MMS Controversy

Privacy and Identity in a Cellular World……………………………………...25

Chapter III

Mobile Phone SMS: The New

Buzzword………….…………………………………………………………..34

Chapter IV

A Brief Overview of the New Media

And the emergence of Mobile Technology…..……………………………….43

Case Studies

Evaluation of Page 3: Myopic and Cheapskate Journalism………………….19

A Celebrity interview on Page 3……………………………………………..20

Living off Page 3: The Nafisa Joseph Case…………………………………...22

Scandals! Scandals! The Infotainment Super update………………………….24

Conclusions…………………………………………………………………….44                                      

Acknowledgement

We express our sincere thanks to the National Library, Calcutta, University Central Library, SIS Library, British Council Library and the Press Council of India, Delhi for the availability of various newspapers and vital documents.

Prof. Dr. Tapati Basu

Sujata Mukherjee

Introduction

"Disconnected from their peers, they risk nothing less than social desolation. The lot of the mobile phoneless is to languish waiting, condemned to a merry-go-round of missed meetings, the mobile tribes having long changed plans and moved on.”

As the spurt in technology has almost revolutionized India, mobile mania is taking the entire nation by storm. According to some, the mobile frenzy has catapulted the nation to newer heights-- which may surpass the Tsunami, albeit in a metaphorical connotation.[1] And this fever, as one might say, or the sweet insanity of drooling into sweet nothings at the push of a button, anywhere, everywhere takes the nation in its grips, the comparatively sane has no other options but to observe his more sophisticated counterpart, as they stare speechless at their mobile phones, irrespective whether they receive a call or not. They stare at the screen for a while before switching it off and put it back in their pocket again. It is really amazing to see the frequency of the action almost every fifteen minutes. It gives us the final verdict-- Indian mobile users love to flaunt their mobile in the public.[2]

In fact, it does not matter how important discussion one is holding with the mobile user. His attention is always drawn towards the call received on their mobile. The moment they receive a call, they never hesitate to abandon their closest friends in the middle of nowhere. Once the call gets over, the person has to be briefed about the entire matter once again, because he is still in a trance from the leftovers from the previous conversation.

Employers are happiest at the turn out of the mobile mania as it helps them to track their employees all the time. On public conveyances, rickshaws, handcarts, and where not, employees are seen to deliver running commentaries, mobile in hand, about their exact location, their changed location at each stop, where he is now and when was he likely to reach a particular point.

And the worst tragedy is, that while they engage in such roadside rendezvous, they give scant regard to the hapless passer-by who sits dumbly beside him, feeling like a treacherous eavesdropper. The torment just does not end here. Mobile phones are carried to condolence meetings as well. Almost all of us have witnessed sometime or the other how the shrill notes of the latest indi-pop number shatter the silence and peace of the condolence hall. Well, it certainly goes a long way to prove the dictat that Marshall Mc Luhan once made—in this case the mobile phone has become a natural extension of man. And it does not matter if he is alive or dead, for the ring of the mobile, spectacular, faint or in a muted tone, is there to stay with us.

While walking on the busy roads of Kolkata, or any plush metropolitan city, one often sees motorcyclists, with their head buried perpetually to their shoulders. This is a modern day malady, which is often mistaken to be a serious handicap in the rider. Probably, they are attending their mobile call by holding the set between their ‘head and shoulders’. A tragy-comedy of an ad  spoof.

This about all sums up the mobile throughout the world over. As has been the case with just about every other invention over the centuries, the cellular technology has been viewed with both joy and sorrow, with excitement and irritation.

Of course, nobody can even remotely disagree that the mobile telephone has been a great boon. Whether it be the fishermen of India's West coast or the small businesswomen in Purulia or the little schoolgirls of Sikkim, this little gadget, which is indeed getting tinier and more sophisticated by the day, has virtually changed the user's life. It has made his or her economic struggle that much more easy to grapple with, and for the teenager whiling away his moments to glory in a Café Coffee Day outlet or on the busy Park Street intersections, the instrument helps connect with love, romance and fun.

The cellular telephone has a hundred other uses, some of which are really beyond the wildest of one's imagination. A small report, though not remotely unimportant, caught the attention, where a group of journalists at Cannes on the French Riviera might have spent the entire night in a small elevator - which stalled between two floors - had it not been for their mobiles.

Not only this. Mobile phones have anew avatar—that of the road guide. In case one feels lost in the serpentine lanes and bylanes of the city, searching frantically for an address, the mobile phone comes in handy. In Rome, in London, in Singapore, it is common to see men and women utilise the cellular telephone with apt appropriateness: as a time saver. They speak into it as they walk, as they ride an escalator, as they drive or travel in a train.

But in India, Kolkata included, the fever has really reached a high pitch. Though every segment of the society, ranging from college-goers, teenyboppers, paanwallas (who sale prepared pan leaves with mashalas) to gas vendors everyone has access to a mobile connection, there is still that tag of status attached to this "walkie-talkie". Young executives, women at kitty parties and college kids flash their mobiles with an air of unconcealed glee, that of sporting the latest version of mobile phones, with its virtually unlimited add on features. And the possibility of extending a conversation is endless. Right from saying ‘hello’ to a colleague, to asking the maid if tea is ready, whispering undying love on Valentines’ day, expressing gratitude with soaky eyes on Mothers’ Day, these wireless sessions go on and on. In fact the latest boon is the lifelong service attached to mobile phones, that gives the scope to talk on for a lifetime.

In the case of advertising fizzy drinks too, the companies have devised an innovative strategy to lure the youth. After the success of the Sprite ghanta bajega, ghanti bajegi (the bell will ring) consumer initiative launched this summer, Coca-Cola India plans to roll out contests using the mobile technology in the next few months. Company sources said the contests would focus on new drinks and variants of the existing products. Vikas Gupta, vice-president (marketing) for Coca-Cola India, said, “Today’s youth want to interact on a one-to-one basis. The mobile short messaging service (SMS) gives them that freedom. We want to tap this opportunity to connect with this segment.”

Innovative marketing programmes are being designed to tap the potential. Under the one-month promotional offer for Sprite, a winner was selected every hour from the SMS sent by a computer draw.Gupta said, “The initiative is the first under-the-crown (UTC) consumer programme launched nationally. We selected the latest Nokia N-Gage QD gaming phone as the prize considering the increasing popularity of mobile gaming.” The FMCG company has received more than 10 lakh SMS responses in a month. Of these, the majority has been generated from the four metros and other key cities like Hyderabad, Bangalore and Ahmedabad.

Communication is fine, but when it becomes compulsive, even something as handy as the cellular telephone can be distracting and distasteful. And, who knows, a threat to our well-being.

However, it is undeniable that there are technological advantages in a mobile phone network that have made the revolution possible. These advantages are for both parties involved: consumers and providers. From a user’s point of view, mobiles give precisely that, mobility: you can get a connection anywhere, there is no need to stay at home to talk on the phone. This is very important for people who do not have “regular” places to stay. As far as I know, people living in slums tend to change their residence frequently for whatever reasons. If you have a landline, changing it might not be a simple matter; with the mobile you don’t have that problem.

Another advantage for users is the fact that mobiles are very convenient for people who spend long times outside their houses (if they got one!). In the place where I work there are many people who have several jobs (not very well paid ones, so they need more than a job to make a decent salary), with families back in their town or villages; these people stay in odd places, not necessarily decent ones (slums, basements, employers houses, etc). Essentially they live bachelor’s lives; under that conditions, getting a landline might be difficult or useless, so a mobile is a much better option.

There are also jobs that require a lot of mobility. For example, the engineers that come to repair my computers; they spend the day moving in the institute or houses, fixing computes, so again for them a landline is no help.In short, for users, mobiles has advantages when either you don’t have a decent place to stay, or you spend long times outside it.

If we compare mobiles to computers you can see the advantage: in a computer network with cables (UTP, thin Ethernet, whatever) the number of connections per room is fixed; you might not be able to get your computer connected if all ports are used, or there are no cables in your room. With a wireless connection all you need is to be within the range of the signal.[3]

For providers, mobiles have advantages too. One of them is for example that there is no need to install cables; this is an important matter when you think that, for example, many slums are in not-so-legal land, so it might be difficult for a phone company to set up exchangers, cables, etc. With a mobile network one has just to get an antena close enough, and there is always some “proper” building near a slum; putting an antena there will give you clients in the building as well as those living in the neighborhood, you don’t have to worry about cables, permissions, etc, etc.

Another advantage of mobiles for providers (here one might be really wrong) is that maintenance is easier. Take the example of computer networks: if a person has to give a cable for each computer he will have to worry about many cables, being sure that they work properly, that they are not chewed up by rats, etc. With a mobile (computer) network all he needs is to be sure that the cable to the access point/router (the “antena”) works;[4] the rest, that is the connection from the antena to the computer, is the user’s headache (whether the wireless card works or not, personal firewalls, settings, etc). Having less hardware (less cables) to take care of makes the system administrator’s live easier; similarly with mobiles, one has to take care that the antena is working, and no worries about cables. Of course, there is the question of connections between antenas, satellites, whatever, but those problems are also present in the old landlines phones.

In short, for providers, mobiles have the advantage of easier set-up (no worries about permissions to lay cables, for example) and easier maintenance. And that might be one reasons why prices of mobiles connections are lower than those of landlines, besides competition and economic reasons.  

And I think these technological advantages for users and providers are what have made mobiles phones so popular. While liberalization has helped by allowing many companies to enter the market (and thus it has driven prices down), there are technological points that have made the mobile revolution possible. I believe that understanding these technological points (and I might be wrong in many of them) will help us to understand how other revolutions can take place.

This research work has been divided into several chapters that try to capture the essence of the mobile mania that has the entire nation dancing to its tune. In this endeavor, it has been sought to look at the situation from all possible angles. The introduction of mobile technology is relatively new in India, and hence its effects are not yet so quantitatively visible. Hence, it has been given a qualitative status, as most of the inferences have been made by reliability, validity and observation. There have been overt and covert references to incidents happening worldwide, that have rendered a new meaning to the mobile phenomenon. Right from the use of SMS, which itself is revolution of sorts, to the ill effects of mobile technology on society, the MMS clippings intruding into the private domain of individuals, to cyber crime, the later chapters deals with them in details.

Chapter 1 concerns with the usage of the mobile phone among the youth of the country, and how they constitute the revolution that has helped the economy earn millions of rupees. In fact this chapter takes an inside view of the new young brigade, who have their purses full, are ready to spend, and the new mobile culture that they live in. The socialisation process that was so vehemently advocated by media educators during the last decade have almost been negated. Nowadays, the youth are not socializing as far as TV is concerned, or are not much interested in cultivating good interpersonal relations. They live in a cocoon, in a separate world, virtually disconnected from the rest of the society, where their only companion is the mobile phone. Be it long conversations, playing the latest games or just fiddling with the wallpapers, the mobile phone has alienated the individual from their society.

Chapter 2 deals with the latest buzzword in media circles, the MMS controversy. It looks into the murky world of pornography and grotesque acts captured over the camera phone, and implications on society. The later half of the chapter takes a look at the ethics related to the circulation of MMS clippings.

Chapter 3 gives a detailed analysis of the SMS revolution that has taken the nation under its grip. In fact, the study of short messaging service itself offers unlimited opportunities for research. The linguists say that the vocabulary used in the SMS messages have opened up new vistas in the use of the English Language and its applications. Social scientists and parents are concerned about the spelling mistakes their wards make after being habituated in writing short to abbreviated terms in their mobiles.

Chapter 4 deals with the conclusions of the research work, where the uses of the mobile phone is seen as a cultural phenomenon, an upcoming area of research, and the future directions that can be taken up in doing research on it, specially in a booming market like India.

Research Methodology

We have tried to bring out careful and accurate classification of facts and observations of correlation, so we have undertaken certain methodological consideration to formulate this non-experimental research. The Research design involves the decision-making, objectivity, reliability, validity and generalization.

We have collected information from two types of sources. They are primary sources and secondary source.

For the presentation of statistical data and other official information’s about the mobile mania in India primary data’s are used which I have taken from the various newspaper reports that have been given in details in the footnotes of the research work.  The views and opinions of eminent personalities are also served as primary sources. Some statistical reports are given in textual form. For the information’s pertaining to the contemporary situations some case studies are taken from reality are included as primary sources.

For the descriptive part and theoretical presentation secondary sources like books, newspapers and journals are used to study the nature, trends and objectives of the contemporary society and situation about the influence of mobile technology on society.

The collected data’s both form primary and secondary sources are analy6sed and interpreted in descriptive, textual, tabular, graphical and objective manner. The analysis is also included observation, views and opinions and survey.

To support the vital aspects of the study some mechanical appliances like xerox, clippings, signed views, statistics and case studies are used.

I have tried to frame the research in the methodology by defining concepts, establishing working definition, collection analysis and interpretation of data and creating the findings to the existing knowledge of generalisation with formulating effective and proper hypothesis of the study on mobile mania, and the human experience.

Future Prospects

There is a great deal of active research and development into mobile phone technology that is currently underway. Some of the improvements that are being worked on are:

One difficulty in adapting mobile phones to new uses is form factor. For example, ebooks may well become a distinct device, because of conflicting form-factor requirements — ebooks require large screens, while phones need to be smaller. However, this may be solved using folding e-paper or built-in projectors.

Mobile phones will include various speech technologies as they are being developed. Many phones already have rudimentary speech recognition in a form of voice dialing. Of particular interest will be real-time voice translation (that must include speech recognition, machine translation and speech synthesis). However, more natural speech recognition and translation in these devices requires a drastic improvement in the state of technology: the phone's processor must be faster by several orders of magnitude with the phone requiring far more internal memory, or new ways of processing speech data must be found. Natural language processing requires inordinately powerful hardware.

Developments in miniaturized hard disks to solve the storage space issue, therefore opening a window for phones to become portable music libraries and players similar to the iPod. The emergence of integration capabilities with other unlicensed access technologies such as a WiMAX and WLAN, as well as allowing handover between traditional operator networks supporting GSM, CDMA and UMTS to unlicensed mobile networks.

Further improvements in battery life will be required. Colour screens and additional functions put increasing demands on the device's power source, and battery developments may not proceed sufficiently fast to compensate. However, different display technologies, such as OLED displays, e-paper or retinal displays, smarter communication hardware (directional antennae, multi-mode and peer-to-peer phones) may reduce power requirements, while new power technologies such as fuel cells may provide better energy capacity.

Terminology

Mobile phone terms Cell phone or cellular telephone[5]

Term used currently in the United States and during the 1980s to refer to most mobile phones. This term applies specifically to mobile phones which use a cellular network. In developing mobile phone technology, American electrical engineers saw the main technical problem as achieving a smooth handoff from one radio antenna to the next. After they gave the name "cell" to the zone covered by each antenna, it was a natural choice for them to apply the term "cellular" to both the technology and the phones that ran on it.

Clamshell
An unfolding oval shape resembling a shell

Handy
pronounced "Hendi", this is a pseudo-anglicism, derived from the term Handy Talkie for a handheld military radio, that is used in Germany for a mobile phone (rare alternative spelling: Händi). Similarly another pseudo-anglic term Hand phone is used in South Korea.

Mobile phone

A term covering cellular phones, satellite phones and any phones giving wide ranging mobility.

Mobile
Short form of the above, a term in everyday usage in some English speaking countries such as the UK.

Satellite phone

A mobile phone which communicates with a satellite rather than a land-based network.

Wireless phone

This is a term which is generally used to refer to a mobile phone although it could legitimately cover almost any phone which does not use a wire.
3G phone

A mobile phone which uses a 3G network.

References

Leonardi, P. M. (2003). Problematizing "new media": Culturally based perceptinos of cell phones, computers among United States' Latinos. Critical Studies in Media Communication, 20(2), 160-179.

Marti, S. and C. Schmandt (2005). Giving the Caller the Finger: Collaborative Responsibilities for Cellphone Interruptions. ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI 2005), Portland, Oregon, USA, 2-7 April.

Pertierra, R. (2005) Mobile Phones, Identity & Discursive Intimacy, Human Technology, 1(1) April: 23-44.

Pertierra, R,, Ugarte E, Pingol, A.;Hernandez, J. and N. Dacanay. (2002) TXT-ing Selves: Cellphones and Philippine Modernity, De La Salle University Press, Manila, Philippines.

Web Site: Center for Mobile Communication Studies, Rutgers University - http://www.scils.rutgers.edu/ci/cmcs/

Web Site: Jared Research's Mobile China - http://jaredresearch.com/mobilechina/#mt

Conference: (2005) Wireless Communication and Development: A Global Perspective. Annenberg Research Network on International Communication Workshop. Marina del Ray, California, USA, 7-8 October. http://arnic.info/workshop05.php

Chapter I

The Mobile Phone Culture in India:  Youth Drives the Mobile Revolution.

Mobile phones are the portals to friendships and social networks, the ultimate measure of social status and portable shrines to self-image, he says. And if no one's calling, there's little shame in programming your phone to ring you, checking for non-existent text messages or talking up a storm with an imaginary friend.

In the words of James Katz, professor of communications and the founder of mobile communication studies at Rutgers University, the mobile is becoming a miniature homunculi (sic) of the person. In a sense, the mobile is becoming a natural part of ones’ physical and sociological self. Physically, it is the standard access point to the larger world. But it is also becoming the portal to ones’ identity and self-knowledge and future. A big fear for many mobile phone users is the loss or theft of their mobiles. Many people go as far to say that they do not know what to do without their mobiles, and some even say that they would die if their mobile sets are lost.

Though at the outset these comments may sound hyperbolic, they are far from meaningless. In a symbolic sense, a loss and a mobile in these circumstances is a sort of annihilation. The mobile is becoming part of the user’s brain and its absence inflicts a sort of social and psychological amnesia.

Three concepts may be borne in mind when we contemplate what the future users will want their phones to have. Firstly, most people want to have the most advanced features at the click of a button in their handsets, as well as style rules the roost for the socially volatile people. However, if there is no breakthrough technology, like the FM mode radio within the handset or sophisticated picture tones, the functional improvements are not as important as style. Secondly, the traditional categories of tools, TV, phonograph, telephones and calendars arose in an earlier era and were derived from separate technological streams. Increasingly, they are being jumbled within the delivery platform as mobile communication technology advances. Hence it is important for designers not to make too many assumptions about the continuing separation of various current devices and services. Third, there is an increasing morphing between the electronic gadget and the human body. The trend will continue, as many future users will want their communicating machines to be one with the physical and social selves.

It is said from many quarters that the youth of India drive the mobile revolution. And the effects have been such that in a span of a decade, the entire telecom economy has been revamped, and comparable to one of the most developed countries of the world. There was a time when it took several years to get a new telephone connection in India. Now, there is less pressure than ever before for fixed landlines as mobile phone subscribers appear poised to outnumber those with a fixed line. By year's end, India may become one of the few countries where the mobile revolution is complete and the mobile reigns supreme, just ten years after it was first introduced.

Every month, India adds another 1.5 million mobile subscribers to the 28 million mobile phone users registered last December2005, and most of them belong to the younger generation. Growth was particularly fast and furious last year, especially after incoming calls were made free by service providers. It is believed that by the end of this year or early next year there'll be more mobile phones than fixed lines, according to a recent survey and all of them will be focused on the youth market, predicts Sandip Das, the head of Orange phones. In his words, "The under 25s are in a majority in India. They are mobile phone savvy," he says.

"If you look at the things they like, it's Nike shoes or a motorcycle and now it's mobile phones as well."

Thus, any substantial research work on the use of mobile phones in a cultural environment like India sets forth certain questions that need to be dealt with at the first instance. For example in understanding how and why the mobile mania strikes first,, one needs to approach a wider angle of view and approach things at a macro level – what circumstances have led to the sudden mobile phone boom in India, a land generally known to take things easily, that is time is not considered a serious impediment in the work process, and how the virtual world of communication and messaging services situates itself in the lives of the Indian youth at large, and also whether its existence has altered the lifestyles of the youth both from emotional and material standpoints. It is significant that we analyze how the appearance of the mobile phone has set into motion a series of changes, which advertently or inadvertently fostered class-consciousness. It is almost an anticlimax that the term has to be used in this sense, because there is a marked change of behavior, particularly among peer groups to treat a person not possessing a mobile phone as a social outcaste.

The essay which follows on the new mobile culture, therefore for more authentic reasons, will not be confined only the youth, but will take a primarily generalist approach. It is best in this way as it will not only shed light on the particularities of a generation, but also diversify on the true character of a social system.

The new mobile culture or the culture of the mobile: A Socio-Historical Analysis

With India entering the 21^st century, certain key questions have been raised regarding the re-oriented place of the mass media— in our everyday lives. This is particularly felt at the urban scenario as the media availability here is the highest. The liberalization of the economy has brought forth tremendous changes at the economic and the cultural level—gradually shifting the trend from a capitalist to a consumer economy. All these has also dramatically changed the power relations at the cultural level with more emphasis been given to the rising aspirations of the expanding middle class. In course of time the introduction of mass media, and specially the world of sophisticated technological gadgets like the camera enabled mobile phone in particular have set the stage for the articulation of conflicts, the reconfiguration of gender identities, and the reaffirmation of the concepts of family and sexuality.

This background of the newly emerging consciousness among the youth section of the population, who are becoming affluent by the day, with changed attitudes and values, have to be kept in focus, in order to understand how the relationship between the individual and mobile technology that has almost created a new world within him, completely alienating him from the rest of the society. Speaking habits of the youth in the metropolises, whose most part of the day is spent in conversing over the mobile phone has undergone great transformation and has reshaped their thought processes, daily habits and leisure activities. It has redefined how they respond to the people around them and has rescheduled the manner in which they spend their time. Hence studying the cultural situation of India and the rise of using mobile phones among the youth from this changed standpoint constitutes a key factor as to how they, with their newly constructed identity configure or reconfigure interpersonal relationships.

Every country has its own pattern of using the mobile phones that is based on the economy and the cultural factors, and these two greatly affect how they deconstruct particular telephonic behavior and behavior associated with it. India is presently undergoing a great transit—set forth by a number of upheavals, like liberalization of the economy, (with cultural Imperialism at its eight as retorted by certain social scientists) stress on a consumer economy, with a dominant middle class along with their desire for consumer items and a shift from the capital goods market to a consumer market etc.

But probing beneath this façade, we also see social and political dichotomies, where there is ambivalence towards the adoption of a secular outlook; there is confusion of identities and communal outbursts framed with terrorism, aggression and pseudo-acts of self-determination. There is ideological discomfiture as there is a cry over secularism with a pro-Hindu government, there is saffronisation[6] of political agenda, and there is a parliament going topsy-turvy over key issues. This has shaken the very foundation of the state where there is a perpetual contradiction of issues by which the country never comes to a state of stability. This is a very unique feature of most Third World countries that have an outer façade of a very liberalizing outlook, but has latent contradictions underneath. It is a legacy that has been bestowed by our Western counterparts. The instability of a fragmented country has given way to a very big market—both of products and ideas. Today, an average Indian is saturated with ads of consumer products—computers, mobiles, washing machines hi-fi audio equipments, and flashy cars, televisions for all of which interest free loans are given. This sudden thrust on consumer durables has given birth to a new Indian—whose relationship with their mobile phones and thereby society has changed dramatically.

Viewed on a greater plane, the usage of the mobile phone among women, and specially working women has been reoriented with women getting an equal footage with men[7] on the economic front, as well as on the social front. Power relationship within the family has also undergone significant changes. This in turn has changed the power relations within the society and thereby the whole nation.

Thus, in a nutshell it can be said that in a post colonial country, like India, the decade of liberalization and the change in Government has fostered an environment where the position of the mobile phone as well as the entire telecommunication industry has been reconfigured. The mobile phone has therefore become a mobilizing instrument in the construction of desires for different kinds of modernity. One interesting thing is that this modernity was in no way a blind imitation of the West but was conceived. This discourse that was so evident gradually washed away the prevailing attitudes and options of people who swore by the mobile technology and what emerged was a new breed of techno savvy youth, armed with the latest version of the mobile phone—whose entire lifestyle was changed and even the mode in which he conversed with his fellow mates changed. Briefly, if we were just to enumerate the characteristics of this ‘Indianisation of the mobile modernity’—it would be:

Modernity brought about by the formal liberalization or decolonization [8]of the nation State, privatization and the import of new technologies

Modernity bestowed by the First World stated towards the Third World in their march towards “progress.”

Modernity by drawing upon and contesting traditional discourses, that one really needed to weed out outdated technologies.

Modernity epitomized by way of consumption became an index of modernity, and moving up the social ladder.

The summation of the Indian conceptions of modernity that was specially prevalent among the middle and would be middle class has been aptly given by Mankekar in brilliant words:. If we were to put it in the case of mobile phones determining social footage, we could infer: “ …….(Owning a mobile phone) was for many itself an index of middle class ness and as middle class lifestyles became equated with modernity—of the modernity of their families. Similarly their ownership of commodities—the amount of furniture and the number of kitchen appliances they possessed, whether they had gas or kerosene stoves and the number of pots and pans they owned—became markers of their position along a slippery slope of upward mobility.”

Who are the Indian Youth

Poised between the commercialism of mass consumption and a questioning of prevailing of social norms, the culture of the youth offer a fascinating insight into the social and cultural state of the present times. An integral point for this discussion is the necessity of taking into account the youth’s position in the social network, comprised by the family and their special needs and desires within that network. They are part of the same social network as their parents, but they are differently placed in that network. Within the framework of that network, the youth love other needs and desires than those of their parents. These needs and desires do not necessarily collide with those of their parents, but they are not identical and the risk of conflict exists.

The youth have more free time than adults and even if the whole of this is not spent at home, they are there in any case a fair amount each day. Thus, home becomes a sphere that must be constantly filled with meaning among the differences in needs and desires between their perceptible in the home environment, the aesthetics is especially prominent. And this ‘need’ of consumption of cultural products seems much more important for the youth than for adults. The consumption of cultural programs in the home occurs primarily via the mass media. They are generally diligent media consumers and it is first and foremost the aesthetic that appeals to them. But if one wishes to study what the use of the media means for the young children in their everyday lives, one cannot however confine oneself to the private sphere. Mass media and mobile telephony are included in this interconnection between public and public spheres.

For the youth, among all the other activities, the mobile phone is  one of the central ingredients of their lives. In the private spheres one can find activities such as more concentrated studying, listening to music, playing and watching television. But if we leave the private sphere and look at the public one, activities always seem to revolve around their newly acquired cell phones.

The characteristics of Gen Y Kids And Youth: A Behavioral Survey

The youth and children segment in India are essentially a generation which is the product of the incredible sociological change wrought by a decade of economic liberalization in India, where free markets play a much bigger role. The Internet and Cable television have also transformed Indian society—forces young people are best equipped to exploit.

Indian youth are already having an enormous impact: on the economy, on the companies hoping to sell them products, on the media, and on the culture. Unlike previous generations, today’s youth are not obsessed with the ins and outs of politics. Thus the current election, which pits the ruling BJP against the Congress Party, has failed to ignite the passions of the young. “Today, even if Parliament blew up, no one from this generation would notice,” says Rama Bijapurkar[9], a marketing consultant. “ It has little relevance for them.” Liberalization’s children also differ from their conservative, insular parents in that they proudly mix Indian values with Western Packaging. They enjoy wearing saris and still admire Mahatma Gandhi. But they also like wearing blue jeans, drinking fizzy sodas, and watching MTV. And to top the list is the extensive use of mobile phones.

This generational shift in attitudes is all the more important because this group is growing so rapidly. Some 47% of India’s current I billion population is under the age of 20, and teenagers in them number about 160 million. Already, they wield $ 2.8 billion worth of discretionary income.[10] By 2015, Indians under 20 will make up 55% of the population—and wield proportionately higher spending power. As this group with its more materialist, more globally informed opinions comes into its own, sociologists predict India will gradually abandon the austere ways and restricted markets that have kept it an economic backwater. These youth will demand a more cosmopolitan society that is a full- fledged member of the global economy. They are also likely to demand more accountability from their politicians. “ This is the generation that is reclaiming India’s future,” says Gurcharan Das, [11]a former Chief Executive of Procter and Gamble, India and author of a forthcoming book on India in the next century.

And the young Indians endorse it heartily. Already, hi-tech startups are taking off in India. Industry experts put the number at almost two per week over the past few years. Pradeep kar,[12] 40, founder of two hi-tech operations, e-commerce company Planetasia.com and portal Itspace.com says he has been receiving e-mail from engineering students chafing to be entrepreneurs and seeking his advice. “The spirit of enterprise will change the face of the Indian economy,” says Kar. Liberalization has created new career models and heroes for India’s young/ Microsoft Chairman William H. Gates III is especially popular, and so are successful home grown entrepreneurs like N.R Narayana Murthy of Infosys Technologies Limited, India’s Premier software company. Other culture heroes are the former Indian Cricket Captain Sachin Tendulkar, who is known for his clean image, and MTV veejay Cyrus Broacha, who is popular among the Indian youth for his confidence and his self-deprecating humor. “Cyrus Broacha’s our man,” says Vinod Makhija, a high school student in Kolkata. “He’s humble and he is wacko”.

Icons like Broacha embody this generation’s ability to adapt Western influences. “We are a hybrid”, says Broacha,[13] who sometimes wears a Gandhi topi, a traditional cap, as well as blue jeans. Embracing globalization has given Indians a new confidence; in fact Indians feel that being Indian now is a badge of honor if spoken in terms of world music, fashion, literary, and intellectual circles. “Even Madonna thinks India is cool, says a law student of Kolkata. “No one asks us anymore if elephants walk the streets. Liberalization has changed all that and given India more exposure internationally”.

The Indian youth have not yet lost all links with their tradition, which in spite of the change in outlook remains embedded in the deeper realms of their mind. But progressive influences are everywhere. If we take the instance of the tradition of arranged marriages, parents still chose their children’s spouses, often without their consent. Nowadays young people marry for love, but also with their parent’s approval.

The younger generation is also nationalistic. In a recent survey by ad agency McCann Erickson Asia Pacific, Asian youth around the region voted Paris, London and New York as the “coolest” cities. But young Indians voted for Bombay, along with New York. “Indian has the best mix of people and cultures you can find, says Purba Chatterjee, [14]a first year student of English of Presidency College, “we should take the best of both worlds”. Purba wants to be an interpreter in the UN. Along with half of her graduating class she intends to take tough exams to prove her mettle in an international arena.

The danger for India is of course, that the potent mixture of aspirations created by TV, computers and marketers in the hearts of India’s young could overheat, and the cauldron could boil over. Some researchers also worry about the rising aspirations colliding with the realities of India’s poverty. “ The young generation may want more,” says Indrani Vidyarthi, of ORG-MARG, India’s premier market research agency. “But how to get more when there ain’t more?” Indeed, almost 60% of rural Indian households have no electricity, so the question of running computers does not arise.

Status symbol

As in much of the world, here too the mobile is the message. Most college and university students admit that it is a style statement. "In some ways it's a status symbol. The better phone you have the richer you are." Others are more emotional about their mobile phones, referring to it as a device one takes refuge to in countering emotional crises. In a nutshell, they can't imagine life without a mobile phone. "It keeps ringing. It makes me feel somebody loves me, somebody cares for me in this world. "And you can stay connected. I feel it's prestigious to have a cell phone."

Case Study 1

Recently, an incident reported in a newspaper showed how peer pressure in acquiring this new status symbol has reached such a height that teenagers do not stoop from committing grave crimes to get money to buy mobile phones.

NPR did a story on the SMS cA 15-year-old from Lucknow, India, who faked his own kidnapping because he wanted cash to buy a mobile phone is safely under lock and key after police traced his menacing calls home using Caller ID.

The unnamed criminal mastermind reportedly wanted a Nokia mobe costing 30,000 rupees (roughly £370). Presumably, his dad was unwilling to cough up the required amount, because on 31 January the lad left home as usual for school but later failed to return. Shortly afterwards, he made his first demand via phone using the time-honoured "hanky over the mouthpiece" ruse. He later admitted: "I would place a handkerchief over the phone set to talk to my father. He was too naive to suspect anything."

The ne'er-do-well demanded 500,000 rupees (£6,100) for his own safe return, warning that failure to comply would result in death and disposal of the non-existent kidnapee's body on a railway line. His relatives, however, went straight to the police, who began to suspect that the boy himself was behind the outrage. Accordingly, they placed Caller ID on his parents' line. Sure enough, after three days, the proto John Dillinger made his final demand from a public phone in Kanpur and the net quickly closed.

He later lamented while in custody: "My friends in school have the latest motorcycles and mobiles. Even the girls flashed mobiles. I used to feel so embarrassed going on my cycle to school. In fact, earlier I had even stolen money from my house and given the same on interest to other boys, but that was not enough to buy that latest mobile."

Case Study 2

Another incident reported from Surat says: “ It's hardly surprising these days to spot teenagers or even preteens in Surat carrying a mobile phone. More and more pre-teens are gaining access to mobile phones, aided by the low costs of these handsets and the competition that drives cellular providers to come up with innumerable concessional offers. The biggest advantage here is the need for parents to keep in touch with their kids; as a result of which, they are only too willing to equip their child with a handset of their own.

Mitali, 14, a student of standard nine in Lourdes Convent School is one such teenager. Her mother, Anita Jain says, "It has become a must to hand over a mobile to children today so that we can keep in touch with them." Children in Surat, today, lead a very hectic life. Apart from school, they attend tuition classes and are involved in a host of extra-curricular activities. "Since they stay outdoors for long hours, we tend to get worried in case we are unaware of their whereabouts. This when mobile phones prove to be useful," she adds.

However, some of the unlucky few urban teenagers not to have a mobile, say they feel left out of a privileged club. "When I see people around me, talking on mobile phones, I feel left out." Students say "mobile cheating" is on the rise, that is the text messaging of answers to knotty exam questions.

Case Study 3

A Ludhiana incident reports:-- The hopes of the city residents to get some respite from snatching incidents in the city with the arrest of a three-member gang of teenagers were dashed to the ground with reports that another gang of teenagers is quite active in the area and is committing one crime after the other at will.

While the victims of this ‘unbridled gang’ are harassed at the loss of valuables , they are suffering at the hands of some cops too. After the publication of news reports about the busting of the gang , many victims rushed to the police station of their respective area hoping they would get a look at the alleged criminals and may be identify them. However, the police was not allowing anyone to see the nabbed accused.

Inquiries made by Ludhiana Tribune revealed that this was because the cops were trying to hide the presence of another gang of criminals in the city. The yet-to-be-nailed gang members are quite similar in description with the three teenagers arrested by the Sarabha Nagar police yesterday. The gang members also operate on a motor cycle and have committed several incidents of snatching in the city, especially in the posh areas of Gurdev Nagar, Sarabha Nagar, Bhai Randhir Singh Nagar, Mall Road and Pakhowal road. Not all victims approach the police for the registration of an FIR. Those who decide to go through the tardy process are often told to wait for a few days for the registration of the FIR.

One woman resident of Gurdev Nagar, Pallavi Jain, who insisted for the registration of an FIR has stated that three unidentified teenagers had snatched a purse containing her passport, mobile phones, cash and other relevant documents from near Malhar road on Tuesday. Police sources have revealed that the second gang too was a major headache for the police. The police has received a number of complaints regarding their activities and were trying to trap the culprits.

Meanwhile, a local School, GRD Academy, has locked horns with the police for claiming before the media that Mandeep Singh and Rohit, two of three teenagers nabbed yesterday for snatching incidents, were student s of the academy.

The school principal, Gurshminder Singh, has contested the claims, saying the two were not the students of the school. SHO, Sarabha Nagar, Pawanjit, however, insisted that the police claim was based on evidence. Sources have informed that one of the accused Mandeep had taken admission but later his name was struck off for long absence from the school.

Business boost

But mobiles, or as India prefers to call them in the American way, cell phones, are not just an adolescent plaything. For many, they are a lifeline. Estate agent Anil Singh says his mobile phone is three things rolled into one - office; address and livelihood. Singh says he recalls the good old days, when he found it frustrating to travel to his clients. Now a hefty chunk of his business is transacted on the mobile, and the phone never stops ringing. "My earnings have gone up manifold since I started using this mobile phone, because I am always available to my clients, twenty-fours a day, and I save on giving up the office space I had earlier," says Singh.

Falling charges

India's mobile revolution is spreading from white collar workers like Anil to blue-collar workers. Today, chauffeurs, plumbers, masons and even domestic maids in metropolises such as Delhi and Mumbai offer mobile phone numbers as a contact. It was unthinkable just a few years ago. When mobile telephony was introduced in India in 1994, there were just a few service providers, such as AirTel. It was a heavily-regulated sector with prohibitive licence fees, high call charges of 30 cents per minute, and expensive handsets. Then, only the privileged could use a mobile in India. But in the last four years, call charges have fallen and licence fees have become more manageable.

Tough market

Competition is stiff as more players enter the market. Hutch, Airtel , BPL, Reliance and Tata are just a few of the more popular mobile phone operators in India today. Even the two state-run fixed-line providers BSNL and MTNL in Delhi and Mumbai jumped on to the mobile phone bandwagon. In less than 18 months, they had six million mobile subscribers between them. "MTNL and BSNL are planning to expand in a big way and by next year we are adding 20 million mobile phone subscribers," says MTNL Bombay chief R.L. Dubey. Mr Dubey believes India will have 150 million mobile subscribers in the next few years.

Clockwork

But would that mean the fixed line is doomed? No, says Mr Dubey, whose MTNL provides landlines to the Indian capital Delhi and the country's entertainment and commercial capital Mumbai. "Landline is just like a wall clock and mobile phone a wrist watch. In any family, there is at least one wall clock, but each member has personal wrist watch. "Similarly, a family will continue to have a landline, but it'll also have several mobile phones." With India poised to introduce broadband next year, the landline is set to be in demand once again. But not as much as before Indians made that crucial call to the mobile phone.

References

Donner, J.

(2005). Research Approaches to Mobile Use in the Developing World: A Review of the Literature. International Conference on Mobile Communication and Asian Modernities, City University of Hong Kong. http://www.columbia.edu/~jd2210/donner-mobrev.pdf.

(2005). The rules of beeping: exchanging messages using missed calls on mobile phones in sub-Saharan Africa . Questioning the Dialogue: 55th Annual Conference of the International Communication Association, New York. http://www.columbia.edu/~jd2210/donner-beeping.pdf

(2005). The mobile behaviors of Kigali's microentrepreneurs: whom they call - and why. N. Kristóf (Ed.). A Sense of Place: The Global and the Local in Mobile Communication. Vienna: Passagen Verlag. www.columbia.edu/~jd2210/donner-whowhy.pdf

(2004). Microentrepreneurs and mobiles: an exploration of the uses of mobile phones by small business owners in Rwanda. Information Technologies and International Development 2(1), 1-22. http://mitpress.mit.edu/catalog/item/default.asp?sid=AE7CBB65-7B05-4325-81C0-9F189D53F276&ttype=6&tid=15564

(2003). What mobile phones mean to Rwandan entrepreneurs. N. Kristóf (Ed.). Mobile Democracy: Essays on Society, Self and Politics. Vienna: Passagen Verlag. http://www.columbia.edu/~jd2210/donner-MSMEmob.pdf

Lindholm, C. Keinonen T. and Kiljander H.(Eds.). (2003) Mobile Usability: How Nokia Changed the Face of the Mobile Phone. McGraw-Hill.

Katz, J. E., (Ed.) (2003). Machines That Become Us: The Social Context of Personal Communication Technology. New Brunswick, NJ, Transaction Publishers.

Katz, J. E. and M. Aakhus (Eds.) (2002). Perpetual Contact: Mobile Communication, Private Talk, and Public Performance. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.

Nyíri, K. (Ed.) (2003). Mobile Communication: Social and Political Effects. Vienna, Passagen Verlag.

Nyíri, K. (Ed.) (2003). Mobile Democracy. Essays on Society, Self and Politics. Vienna, Passagen Verlag.

Nyíri, K. (Ed.) (2001). Mobil információs társadalom: Tanulmányok [The Mobile Information Society: Essays], Budapest: MTA Filozófiai Kutatóintézete. http://21st.century.phil-inst.hu/ twovolumes .htm

Chapter II

Shaping the Future Mobile Information Society: The MMS Controversy. Privacy and Identity in a Cellular world

An Overview

An explosion in the use of mobile telephony has taken place within the last two decades. It has cut across geographic and socio-demographic criteria, with developing and developed countries alike witnessing growth rates. Mobile lines overtook fixed lines on a global scale at the end of 2002. At the end of 2003, there were over 1.35 billion mobile subscribers worldwide, compared with only 1.2 billion fixed-line users.

The growing importance of mobile communications has a number of implications. Although ITU has been working on technical specifications for Internet and mobile networks, such as 3G's IMT-2000, for over a decade, this is the first time that it has convened a global meeting to examine the social and human considerations relating to the rapid development of this technology.

"Mobile phones are everywhere. The typical user carries one with them wherever they go, and would be hard-pressed to part with it. In this respect, the mobile phone has moved beyond being a mere technological object to become a key "social object", present in every aspect of our daily lives," noted Mr. Roberto Blois, Deputy Secretary-General of ITU, who opened the workshop. "The question that is raised is how well equipped we are as a society, and as individuals, to live in a world of technological ubiquity? As we move towards a future in which the mobile phone may become the personal ICT device of choice, are the appropriate safeguards in place?"

The Future Mobile Information Society

The ITU Workshop entitled "Shaping the Future Mobile Information Society" was held in Seoul, Republic of Korea from 4 to 5 March 2004, and was hosted by the Ministry of Information and Communication. Some 50 experts participated in the workshop, representing a range of regulatory and policy-making agencies, mobile operators, service providers, academic institutions, futurologists, private firms, and others. Mr. Svend Kraemer, Head of Sector within the European Commission's Information Society Directorate, chaired the meeting.

Two background papers were prepared for discussion at the workshop: "Broadband mobile communications towards a converged world" and "Social and human considerations for a more mobile world". In addition, a number of case studies were prepared covering country experiences in Japan, the Republic of Korea, Morocco and Norway. All meeting documents including case studies and presentations are available here .The experiences of a number of other economies was also presented, including Canada, Hong Kong (China), India, the Philippines, the United Kingdom and the United States.

A Mobile Information Society: Changing the meaning of Privacy Worldwide

The Information Society may be defined as a world in which "everyone can create, access, utilize and share information and knowledge" (Declaration of the World Summit on the Information Society). The mobile information society is based on realizing the so-called 3 "A"s (anyone, anytime, anywhere). The generation that has grown up using mobile phones (labeled "GenTXT" in the Philippines) will have different social habits and norms than their parents. Like any technologies, the associated social changes bring benefits but also pose challenges and ethical questions.

In Norway, for instance, public policy requires that individual tax returns are publicly available via the Web. This has promoted a Friday night boom in SMS traffic to the tax service as Norwegians meeting friends, business colleagues or potential mates check on their earning potential before deciding whether to take the relationship further.

In Japan, automated SMS alerts can be sent to parents' mobile email to inform them on when and where to pick up their children after school ("Child Pick-Up Service").

In the Republic of Korea, downloading anti-mosquito ring tones helps to making camping a more pleasant experience while traffic alerts delivered to in-car navigation systems help Koreans to arrive at the camps-sites in good time.

In Kenya, farmers use mobile e-mail to check current market prices in order to avoid exploitation by commodity speculators or middlemen.

In Morocco, banks send SMS to their customers to tell them of the completion of funds transfers.

In Germany, young men who do not use SMS to reaffirm their love for their partners soon find themselves lonely. In the Philippines, Chikka.com enables Filipinos working overseas to stay in touch with their loved ones via instant messages converted to SMS on mobile phones. In Scotland, a network of SMS users co-operatively tracks the movements of Prince William, the heir to the British throne, to ensure he never arrives anywhere without a crowd of admirers. In Sweden, mobile gamers ("Botfighters") track and "kill" other users nearby via SMS. When riding the Stockholm subway, SMS can also alert a small group of "fare-jumpers" to the presence of ticket collectors. The Workshop addressed the issues of change in social behaviour and manners with the advent of mobile telephony. Among the insights expressed is the notion that the highly targeted group communications enabled by mobile voice and SMS messaging would tend to weaken more conventional 'face-to-face' community forms while conversely strengthening networks.

Privacy and Identity in a Mobile World

Mobile phones are shaping the identity of individuals, families and social groupings. They are increasingly viewed as a status symbol by adults and youths alike, and clearly affect the way people interact with each other. An interesting example is the growing trend of "bluejacking" (particularly in Europe), which allows users to send anonymous notes at no charge to others (often strangers), within the range of their bluetooth-enabled phone.

Like many information and communication technologies (ICTs), mobiles are meant to save us time. But this new generation of always-on, anytime, anyplace technologies may allow for levels of convenience and safety, but also of surveillance, unknown and unimagined by earlier generations.

In a digital environment, protecting one's identity is becoming an increasingly difficult task. One of the new rituals is the conscious concealment or display of the "caller identification" feature on mobile phones. The staggering growth of camera-enabled phones raises concerns about the use of photography for exploitation or invasions of privacy. In order to take full advantage of advances in wireless medical technologies, patient records and information stemming from " body area networks" must be adequately protected. And as we start reaching for the next billion users, the need to manage unsolicited messaging (Spam), while ensuring that innovative services are developed, will become even more acute.

The question that is raised is whether we are well-equipped as a society, and as individuals, to live in a world of technological ubiquity, a world in which an intelligent microwave warms up your dinner before you get home, or your mobile phone tells you that your spouse is late for dinner. Consider the use of tiny Radio Frequency ID tags imbedded into clothing to help retail businesses track inventory. Will these remain active once the item has been purchased and what kind of information will be collected? At the dawn of this new age, it is important to consider what effect these technologies are having on the way we grow, interact, socialize and learn.

Mobile at heart: MMS Clippings, Opportunities and Threats for the Youth Market

Mobile users are getting younger and younger. A technology-savvy segment of society, young people are enthusiastic early adopters of new mobile services. Their use of mobile "txting" (e.g. SMS, email, MMS), mobile Internet services and gaming typically exceeds that of their older counterparts.

In the Republic of Korea, for example, the largest use of the mobile Internet is among junior high school students. In the Philippines, teenagers are the most avid texters. In Japan, the penetration of mobile phones among 18-year-old girls is nearing 100 per cent.

Young people use mobiles to create and maintain social networks and to reflect their popularity or position in a peer group. The attitude of young people towards their mobile phones is not purely related to device functionality, but rather to their own individuality or identity. The youth market is an important predictor of how the future mobile information society will develop. Service providers and operators alike are looking at better ways to target this growing market segment. At the same time, one must ensure that young people are protected from, inter alia, inappropriate content, invasions of privacy, excessive spending, technological addiction (such as gaming addiction), and any negative health effects (e.g. sedentary lifestyles, cellular radiation).

In a paper entitled "Mobile phones, MMS clippings and the youth, there were many instances where MMS clippings of Bollywood stars have been taken, going against their privacy. Before the Shahid-Kareena kissing in public episode that was captured in a MMS clip and viewed across the nation, Indian heartthrob Hrithik Roshan had to face the same rage, though via threatening SMS calls. It went on to prove the larger debate that be it MMS or SMS, the mobile phone was there to jeopardize every human act done in public as well as in private. According to the reports,

The Hrithik Roshan Phone Threats and the Underworld

India’s hottest new movie star -- a young man with a smile like Elvis and a body like Hercules --

was doing bicep curls in a friend's private gym when his mobile phone trilled one evening late last month. It was his movie producer father, hysterical with fear. "Don't move!" cried Rakesh Roshan, whose frothy, newly released film, starring his son Hrithik had become India’s biggest movie hit in over a year. "I've just gotten shot!"

Here in the movie capital, a dream factory both seedy and glamorous, the men who make movies find themselves caught in a Catch-22: If their films bomb -- as most do -- they lose their shirts. In the unlikely event that they produce a blockbuster, they become targets for underworld extortionists.

"You already have enough tension, worrying if your movie will flop," said 26-year-old Hrithik Roshan, in his first interview since the attack on his father. "But now you have another worry. What if you have a hit movie and get killed?"

The out-of-nowhere ambush of Rakesh Roshan was eerily similar to the celluloid shooting of Hrithik in their new movie, "Say You Love Me." The police suspect it may have been ordered by a notorious gangster, Abu Salem, who once lived in Bombay but is now believed to live as a fugitive somewhere in the Middle East and preys on the movie industry through flunkies here. He generally makes his threats over untraceable satellite phones.

Mr. Roshan survived a bullet that pierced his arm and lodged in his chest, but the hit job has created what people here in Bollywood call a "fear psychosis." The underworld's message to the movie industry came through loud and clear: Pay up or we'll kill you.

The Roshans are now among more than 50 movie people getting round-the-clock protection from the Bombay police. Plainclothes officers toting machine guns sit outside stars' opulent homes and in movie company lobbies festooned with posters of bosomy starlets and lovers embracing in sunny, flowering fields.

He said the threatening calls came on his mobile phone eight or nine months ago, then again two months ago. He, too, said the men claimed to be from Abu Salem's gang. But Mr. Roshan said he hung up, or passed the phone to a friend -- and never found out what the men wanted. He is an honest man who wanted nothing to do with criminals, he said.

"I didn't take the calls seriously," he said.

But the police think Mr. Roshan knows more than he is letting on. They note that he did not ask for their protection until after he was shot. But the nasty calls have started up in the last six months or so. Mr. Chopra said it is Mr. Salem himself who phones. "You pay income tax, right?" Mr. Salem tells him calmly. "This is my tax. If you don't pay, I'll kill you."

Japanese take MMS clips of the Dead

There was another incident reported in an international daily that MMS clippings were being taken of the dead just before the funeral. It goes like this—“ Japan’s obsession with camera equipped mobile phones has taken a bizarre twist, with mourners at funerals now using the device to capture a final picture of the deceased.” I get the sense that people no longer respect the dead. Its disturbing.” A funeral director told the Mainichi Shimbun newspaper. At the ceremony several people gathered around the coffin and took out their phones to photograph the corpse as preparations were made to begin a cremation. “ I am sure the deceased would never want their faces photographed,” said another person. But others called it a form of memento in the modern age.

The DPS Controversy

A recent report which came out in ‘Bollywood’ related an incident of a different sort altogether. It perhaps added fuel to the already prevalent controversies of the MMS clips, which first came to sharp focus with the incident at Delhi Public School. The incident went on to get front page headlines for several days. It proved the daily used dictum that was not believed by the general public; that sex and pornography had entered even the school campuses. DPS is known to be one of the most premier schools in India, and so there was great public outrage when an incident occurred in which two students were shown having sex within the school campus. The entire shot was taken by a mutual friend who later sent it to other friends, and the whole episode spread like wildfire. There was angst in the voices of the public, social scientists, political philosophers, parents and NGOs. It was debated in public circles – whether it was ethical to shoot photos having utter disregard for peoples’ privacy.

Bank Employee MMS clip controversy

Another incident reported by Divya Chawla in Mumbai on November 22^nd, 2005 went like this:--

In a bizarre incident, an employee of a prominent private bank has alleged that he was sexually assaulted by three of his friends who also shot an MMS video clip and blackmailed him by threatening to circulate it. The victim, in his twenties and hailing from Shamli in Uttar Pradesh, also alleged that the three men beat him up severely when he protested, police sources said today.

The ICICI BAnk employee, an MBA, alleged that his friend a share broker, had taken him to a house in Srinivaspuri in South Delhi on the pretext of attending a party earlier this week.There the duo was joined by two other men and they had some drinks. Later, Sharma and the two others allegedly sexually assaulted the youth and shot an MMS clip.

They blackmailed him by threatening to circulate the MMS and took Rs 30,000 from him, the victim alleged.A senior police official said that the victim had lodged a complaint that he was beaten up, but no mention was made of a sexual assault.

The victim had already left for Shamli and further investigations were being conducted into the matter, the sources said.

The Kareena-Shahid Incident of Public Kissing

 After this incident, there was a spurt of incidents in Bollywood, India’s film industry, where two noted film stars were caught on camera, kissing each other in full public view. This incident too received a lot of flak from the people who debated whether it was the right of people cosying up to each other in public or the public had the right to shoot anything it pleased without caring a hoot about the privacy of people. The Kareena-Shahid affair, as it was called came to full limelight and the film stars received a lot of news space. The entire episode sent the ball rolling for many starlets, like Mallika Sherawat, Riya Sen, Amrita Arora ,Koena Mitra etc, who were seen in the MMS MMS clips—having physical intimacy with people. Some of them said tha the video clippings were morphed, but it goes to prove a fact that MMS clips are a reality and it is here to stay—whether one likes it or not.

In fact, there were exclusive interviews published just with this MMS controversy in the forefront. One of them reported: “Actor Mallika Sherawat is no stranger to the limelight, good or bad. After the graphic MMS video clip of a sex act between a foreigner and a lookalike of Mallika began doing the rounds on mobile phones, a "hurt, upset, livid, and angry" Mallika, who's currently in France, approached the Mumbai Crime Branch, and the Cyber Crime Cell about the offending clips.

The Mallika Sherawat MMS Controversy

After a lot of prodding, the actor spoke to CT. "I've not seen the clip, but I feel so helpless. I broke down when I heard of it," she says. The actor, who has boldly proclaimed that there's nothing wrong with being described as a sex symbol, denies it's her in the MMS clip. "It's not me. Somebody is behind this for sure. And it's a menacing act. This harms my dignity, my reputation and my name. Today it's me, tomorrow it

could be anybody. Because I am innocent, I didn't want to keep quiet and went and lodged complaints with the concerned authorities."

The actor isn't bothered about the source of the six-minute long triple-X MMS clip. "I heard the picture is perfectly colour co-ordinated and well toned. My face has been placed on someone else's body. It's a classic case of technology abuse. It's sad that some pervert is having fun at the cost of someone's honour and dignity. And instead of supporting a girl in distress, some are making a tamasha out of it," fumes the forthright actor.

After a lot of prodding, the actor spoke to CT. "I've not seen the clip, but I feel so helpless. I broke down when I heard of it," she says. The actor, who has boldly proclaimed that there's nothing wrong with being described as a sex symbol, denies it's her in the MMS clip. "It's not me. Somebody is behind this for sure. And it's a menacing act. This harms my dignity, my reputation and my name. Today it's me, tomorrow it may be someone’s daughter.”

She's been reaching out to her family for support. "I need to reach out to them when I am low. They are very hurt. My mother tells me to ignore all of this and concentrate on my work. They have faith in me," she says.

About whether this could all be a publicity stunt as her detractors claim, she retorts, "Oh God! Not again. I think I will ignore it this time. I have always been honest and forthright about my feelings, maybe that's why I attract attention."

Hypothetically speaking, if the picture really did depict her engaged in a sexual act with someone, what would she have done? Mallika refuses to consider it. "Let's not get into that territory. At this point, whatever I say could be misconstrued," she says.

She concludes, "Today it's me, tomorrow, it could be your daughter, sister or wife. We have to find a way to fight this menace. A girl's dignity is everything to her."

Lakme India fashion Week: MMS showing Wardrobe malfunction

The latest controversy regarding the MMS clip was of the ‘wardrobe malfunction’ in the Lakme India Fashion show a few days ago, in which a model, Carol Gracias’ bustier fell off in full public view, enabling hordes of people to shoot the video clipping in their mobile phones via MMS. Tough such phenomenon was not exactly unknown in the USA, it was not heard of , until now in India, a country where the women are still put on a different respectful pedestal. A report that came out on the 5^th of April, 2006 in ‘The Telegraph’ vividly discussed the term ‘wardrobe malfunction’ in its Indianised version. The headline was very catchy, and the report came out in the front page, making it both attractive and sensational. It goes like this:--

“Phew! Fashion Slips Through—The greatest mystery vexing Maharashtra’s lawmakers has been cracked. No, its not the farmer suicides dogging the state or the looming power crisis, but whether the wardrobes of carol Gracias and Gauhar Khan malfunctioned by accident or design at the Lakme India Fashion week.

Carol’s bodice, designed by Beenu Sehgal, had come undone and Gauhar’s skirt, designed by Laschelles Symmons—had slipped off while they were strutting their stuff on the ramp last week.

Mumbai police gave the fashion fraternity today a clean chit, a day after they were put on the job by the state Home Minister R.R Patil on the insistence of the Shiv Sena MLC Neelam Gorhe, BJP colleagues in tow. “ We told Carol and Gauhar that if they had complaints against anybody, the focus of the investigations would change and police would not hesitate to book those who are guilty.” DCP, enforcement, Sanjay Aparanti said.

“ The designers, Beenu Sehgal, and Laschells Symmons, were apologetic about the incidents.”

This morning, the two models and their designers as well as their show organizers were summoned to the crime branch headquarters at Crawford Market.

Carol and Gauhar were the first to be questioned, but both said they did not smell anything fishy. They did not hold anyone responsible nor did they want police intervention, they said.

International incidents on Wardrobe malfunction

Given along with this was the history of such similar cases—February, 2004, when Janet Jackson gave a bodice ripping Super Bowl performance. September 2004—Miss Universe Jennifer Hawkins skirt slips in Sydney. November 2004—Former Bond girl Sophie Marceau’s dress slips off at Cannes. July, 2005—Mariah Carey’s entire dress comes undone in Germany. February, 2006—Lindsay Lohan suffers slip off at a Hollywood fashion show. April 2006—Model Carol Gracias’ top slips as does Gauhar Khan’s skirt at the Lakme Fashion week.”

Conclusion

In less than twenty years, mobile telephones have gone from being rare and expensive pieces of equipment used by businesses to a pervasive low-cost personal item. In many affluent countries, mobile phones now outnumber land-line telephones, with most adults and many children now owning mobile phones. Mobile phone penetration is increasing around the world; this is particularly true of developing countries, where there is little existing fixed-line infrastructure.

With high levels of mobile telephone penetration, a mobile phone culture has evolved, where the mobile phone becomes a key social tool, and people rely on their mobile phone addressbook to keep in touch with their friends. Many people keep in touch using SMS, and a whole culture of "texting" has developed from this.

The mobile phone itself has become a totemic and fashion object, with users decorating, customizing, and accessorizing their mobile phones to reflect their personality.

The capabilities of mobile phones are now being expanded further, to become smartphones which can adopt the roles of Internet browser, game console, personal music player and personal digital assistant.

Mobile etiquette has become an important issue with mobiles ringing at funerals, weddings, movies and plays. Users often speak at increased volume, with the effect of nearby people hearing personal conversations that they don't necessarily want to hear.

Chapter III

Mobile Phone SMS: The New Buzzword

"Getting calls and text messages are status symbols," she says. "Ownership of a mobile phone indicates you are socially connected, independent from your family and in demand

The short messaging service (SMS) used by mobile telephones is creating a revolution in India, and among other things, it has revived the country’s famed Kama Sutra spirit of sexual freedom, long suppressed by the intrusion of prudish values into the country.

The Festivities of India And SMS

Sample this. The amount of SMS traffic sent on special occasions like Dussehra, Diwali and in more recent years, the Valentine’s Day have put the entire system out of gear, for which sometimes there is a total network failure. But the people concerned are undaunted by this. They feel an esteem need fulfilled when they send or receive SMSs.  The noted Kolkata daily, ‘The Telegraph’ in fact ran two full page coverage on the messages sent on Valentines Day. All this was unthinkable even a decade ago, and it seems that irrespective of age and gender, the SMS frenzy has really caught on. The amount of messages sent on special days such as national festivals, SMS traffic increases so much that the networks are clogged, forcing users to stare helplessly at their mobile phone screens that say: Message sending failed.

It is a fact that unlike the past decade, when outlets such as Archies, Paper Rose, etc. made a fortune by selling cards, this generation is more experimental as far as sharing feelings go. They are more interested in sending warm, personalized messages, that are short, and straightforward than writing poetry to express their feelings for their loved ones. Only on very few occasions do people really venture out to buy a card, with its elaborate musings on love, Father’s day, and more importantly, birthdays.

A lot of people, and it would be a misnomer to think that they represent the youth section, have said that the first reason for choosing a SMS to a card is the cost. A card is by far more costly than a SMS—ranging from a minimum of rupees ten going up to rupees three hundred. Secondly, people have become more time conscious and do not have the time to venture out to buy a card. A SMS is possible just at the touch of a finger. Thirdly, the requirement of a fast paced society has just dawned upon the people of India, who prefer short, and warm messages than offbeat and melodramatic poetry. It sure seems that rationality has crept into the thought processes of the new generation, who prefer to say their own words in their own style than borrowing someone else’s vocabulary. Today, the SMS facility is enjoyed by the masses in all its fervor. There are personalized ringtones, wallpapers, cartoons, emoticons, background colours, everything to lure the sender. So, when a person has to send a message the next time, he does not have to seek refuge at the local stationary shop to buy a card. The SMS says it all.

SMS, The Hi-Tech Flirting

Indeed, within a few years of its introduction as a value-added service for mobile phone users, SMS has in many circles come to stand for "some more sex". Indian scholars Viagra with buttons and a ring tone" and so on are now studying strange new subjects such as "textual intercourse", "hi-tech flirting", "electronic aphrodisiac", An estimated 25 million short messages are exchanged daily by just 400,000 SMS users out of India's 8 million cell phone owners.

This is exactly what happened on Monday, the day that India celebrated Diwali, last year, the beautiful festival of lights, which commemorate the victory of good over evil. SMS traffic was reported to be four times more than normal as mobile users across the country opted to send Diwali greetings through this most economical, convenient and instant mode of communication. The increase in traffic spelt huge revenue for cellular operators as they charge Rs 1.50 (US three cents) per message.  However, this resulted in network clogging

In Delhi alone, 9 million messages were sent. Hutchison and Airtel recorded over 4.6 million and 3.4 million messages respectively on Diwali day in the capital, as opposed to 1.1 million to 1.2 million messages on a normal day. In Mumbai, BPL recorded 2 million outgoing messages.

Hutchison says that it recorded SMS traffic of close to 5 million during the period. "That represents a 500 percent jump over normal usage. Compared to last Diwali, New Year or Holi, the rush was unprecedented," said Hutchison officials. The problem of clogged networks was accentuated by the tardiness of users in deleting "read" messages and in cleaning up their mail boxes.

What also contributed to the problem was that it was not just plain old "Happy Diwali" text that the networks had to carry. With flashing messages and picture messages with different ring tones fighting for airspace, the load on the networks got worse. So users, for next time, were advised to do what they have to do to beat the morning rush hour - the earlier you start, the better your chances.

SMS: The Aphrodisiac of Lonely Minds

On normal days, however, there is no such problem. For tens of thousands of upwardly mobile people it has become a new life style. Any sudden visit to a mall, a multiplex, the busy bus stops, one is stupefied to see people staring blankly at their mobile phones, or even fiddling away numbers to glory. He does not mind the blazing sun pouring out on him, and is completely oblivious to his surroundings. The only thing that exists for him is himself and his mobile phone, for which he is indomitably possessive. Women who earlier found it embarrassing to stand alone, waiting for someone on the roads no longer have any problem, as they have their mobile phones for company. And it does not matter if the person she is waiting for is late by an hour. She has at last found her soul mate in the cell phone, where she can pour out all her angst and desires. The addiction is growing.

It is a fact that the SMS culture has even entered the domains of ones’ bedroom. This is not to say that it had not already intruded and invaded the privacy of people in his daily chores. But after having a hectic day, when a person retires, he still carries over the little device to his bed-side. And the worst part is, that even if the handset is switched off, the person does not want to let it go off his sight. It has assumed the role of the passive spouse, in that it is always handy if one needs it—ready to serve and cajole.

In a cover story entitled "Love, Sex and SMS" in India's largest circulated news magazine, India Today, Shefalee Vasudev writes, "In most cases, hi-tech flirting - often punctuated with smileys and winking 'emoticons' - is a private display of affection. You can hear them in pubs, meetings, seminars, fashion shows, sit-down dinners, drawing rooms, even in bedrooms. The buzz of the SMS has become an omnipresent, everyday rhythm, sometimes the secretive smiles giving away the frenzied exchanges between couples even as they sit in the same room watching a fashion show or attending a corporate conference.

According to Sultan Shahin in the journal ‘South Asia’, some users confess that they spend a good part of the night making SMS love. In his words,"The amazing thing is the way SMS has charmed the number and variety of people. From celebrities and corporate barons to politicians and professionals, SMS has made mushy idiots out of many. It is indicative of a paradigm shift in personal communication among Indians, for many of whom explicit talk about love and sex is restrained by conscious cultural reminders."It can be great fun and surely enhances intimacy. When I get an official message [through SMS], I do feel a little disappointed." - Chandan Mitra, editor-in-chief, The Pioneer daily newspaper.

"Letters are outdated and phone calls can be boring. SMS is direct and exciting." - Neena Gupta, actress.

"Infidelity was always there. SMS has just made it easier. It is natural for many to write what they're hesitant to say. Now technology enables us to do just that in relationships where you can't speakmuch."—

 "SMS is like Viagra with buttons and a ring tone. I believe it is a very 'powerfully silent' communication tool, very personalized and almost akin to human touch. I use it for three things primarily: work, play and foreplay. On the foreplay front, it is great for mind games," - Suhel Seth,

"Personal communication through SMS is much better than a voice mail and sure, one cannot rule out its fun component." - Rajiv Pratap Rudy, minister of state for commerce.

"SMS takes away the awkward blushes of picking up the phone and not knowing what to say," - SMS freak and actor, Parveen Dabas, of Monsoon Wedding fame.

"The ultimate four-letter word is 'talk'. Talk is a potent foreplay and unfortunately it doesn't happen much in Indian bedrooms. There is no doubt that if a man and woman exchange 50 SMS messages in an hour's time, it has more to do with sexual intent than just flirtation." - Dr Prakash Kothari,

"Culturally, Indians find verbal expression difficult. SMS is perfect. It is direct but avoids face to face contact. However, people wrongly perceive intensity in passion as depth in a relationship." - RitaMarathey, SMS addiction is no doubt a world-wide phenomenon. A recent survey by UK-based TV station The Dating Channel found that some people would rather give up chocolate and TV than lose the SMS facility.

SMS As An Expression of Love

But in India it has opened the floodgates of love and lust. It has provided a perfect medium of expression, and an intensely private one at that, for the bashful, repressed, inhibited Indian.

"It really is a woman's medium," says Vir Sanghvi, editor-in-chief of The Hindustan Times, who feels that SMS has empowered a lot of women to be original when sending text about love and romance, something about which they would otherwise be shy. Writer Anil Dharker agrees. "Dirty jokes used to be such a male thing," he says. "But dirty SMS jokes as a form of women's empowerment will make a minor footnote in the history of the women's liberation movement."

Statistics support these observations. A study done by the International Data Corporation in India found that women use SMS more frequently than men. One factor perhaps is the room for innovation in using abbreviations, the so-called 'texting'. SMS junkies consider this fun. It provides an outlet for their creativity. So much so that some girls say that they would leave their current partners if they found another person who was better at SMS, that is, if he could devise better, more imaginative texts.

"Texting provided a lifeline," says Vasudev. "With 75 percent of people using the technology to flirt and 25 percent claiming it made them feel more confident and witty. SMS works as a tool for verbal foreplay because it can be graphic and imaginative. Moreover, there are no rules to this infectious evolving language of phonetic abbreviations."

Mr. Shahin, in his article further illustrates his point when he points out to the an article titled "r u hookd?", K Sunil Thomas illustrates this point: "Its shrt'n'swt, its gr8 fun, & evn bd splng wrks! If you are able to read through that sentence without blinking, then you are one of the millions across India who are avid fans of SMS, that natty feature on your mobile phone which lets you keep in touch with anyone around the world for almost nothing."

Love and lust have always had powerful advocates and equally powerful enemies. In the case of SMS love, the greatest enemy can be your spouse, if any. SMS has made it possible for married couples to send love messages to third partners while in the company of their spouses. This is generating a lot of mistrust and snooping around.

Newspaper Incidents of SMS Related Crime

Herein we enter a domain which gets slightly tizzy. The device, which started off innocently as a talking machine, has been used to vent deeper anxieties, lust, desire, and gross insensitive behaviour, ripping apart the sanctity of relationships. There have been many instances where husbands and wives have been caught cheating on each other, and most of the times they have been found out from the content of their mobile phones. Marriages have been fixed as well as unfixed via the mobile phone.

Even life and death is given a hard blow via the mobile phone. In a report conveyed in a news channel a month ago, an incident came into focus, again in Mumbai, how a lover provoked his girlfriend to commit suicide by asking her to do so via SMS. The girl, who belonged to a well to do family, was in a fit of depression and committed suicide.

Case 1

There was an interesting piece of news published in a newspaper the other day—which sanctified the uttering of ‘Talaq’ over the mobile phone. Thus, if a husband cannot face up the consequences of his rejection, he feels safer to utter the words on the mouthpiece of his mobile than in person. Another case that was reported during the rain floods in Mumbai some months ago was, when marriages had to be cancelled due to the bad weather conditions in Mumbai. The brides and the grooms exchanged marriage vows over the mobile phone, as all landlines were out of order due to the heavy rain.

In the case of reporting adultery in marriages, mobile service providers say that husbands are increasingly demanding printouts of their wives' SMS records. But this is not as easy as in the case of normal mobile calls. As the networks can spare only limited lines for SMS and the traffic is heavy, it is possible to get records of messages sent only a couple of hours earlier. Thus, the frenzy of "textual intercourse" can go on for some more time until technology devises newer methods of snooping and making SMS as risky as mobile phone communication itself.

Jealous spouses are not the only ones to ask for monitoring, however. They have powerful collaborators in the intelligence agencies. Unfortunately, the signature tune of contemporary life is not love, even lust: it is terrorism. Terrorism, or freedom struggle, as some put it, plants its shadow everywhere. A powerful and very private communication tool like SMS cannot be immune from it. Terrorists can use it. So the governments have to intervene.

However, SMS have sometimes proved to be the greatest weapon in the hands of demonstrators and people who have something to say against the unfair happenings going on in society. Recently, the Jessica Lal murder case took a nasty turn when the judgment issued was put up for public scrutiny and outrage. Different organizations came forward to express their solidarity for a case, which they alleged, had been closed due to spurious money dealings. The entire nation was up in arms against the verdict and expressed their unity by SMS. And herein lies the boon of mobile technology, in that it helped in creating public opinion that ultimately exposed a can of worms regarding out judicial setup.

The SMS petition campaign for justice in the Jessica Lal murder case was wrapped up last week with more than 200,000 SMS signatures. On air the 24-hour news station NDTV solicited their viewers – mostly middle class and mobile phone owners - to send a text message to the station protesting the injustice they saw in the acquittal of all nine men accused in the fashion model's murder in a crowded bar. These text messages, treated like signatures on a petition, were promised to be sent to the president to show the nation's outrage in what they saw as government corruption and a police cover up.

NDTV's managing editor said, "That just goes to show you technology has changed the face of mobilization completely. Because if this were like ten years ago and you were going door to door collecting signatures, which would have been its equivalent, it would have taken you many more logistics, just an army of volunteers. You didn't need any of that. You needed one rallying point on television.”

"There is no technology to trace an SMS," says a telecom official. Acknowledging this, the police hope that technology moves fast enough so that messages can be intercepted in the same easy manner in which voice calls can be overheard. In the past few months, the police feared that Kashmiri militants were using SMS channels, even though mobile phones do not work in the state of Jammu and Kashmir.

The government of India has asked cell phone operators to put in place SMS interception technology to facilitate monitoring. But this can be done only on the directive of the home secretary (or an officer designated by him) or a state's chief secretary. Once an alert is issued, the operator can keep records of all messages sent and received on a number. Ordinarily, operators do not keep the contents of an SMS once it is sent. Only the number to which the message is sent is recorded.

When the government intervenes and the police want to monitor a technology, courts cannot be far away. Says telecom lawyer Ramji Srinivasan, "If a court asks for the reproduction of a text message, the mobile service providers will have to submit it."

Legality of SMS

Lawyers have raised the next logical question: Is SMS a legal document? The Information Technology Act, 2000, makes any record sent in electronic form admissible evidence in a court of law. Electronic record is defined as "data, record or data generated, image or sound stored, received or sent in an electronic form or microfilm or computer-generated micro fiche". Electronic form is defined as "any information generated, sent, received or stored in media, magnetic, optical, computer memory, microfilm, computer generated micro fiche or similar device". An SMS sent from a mobile is accepted as "electronic record" transmitted in "electronic form". Whether it is authentic or not will be subject to the usual tests under the general rules of evidence.

One problem for the courts, however, will remain - unraveling the SMS language and translating it to a normal language. The accuracy or otherwise of translations, too, will provide the lawyers with the opportunity to drag out cases for years.

Sample some of the SMS messages collected by India Today, and if one can write as well in this language, one may have good prospects in India's SMS love industry:

"My mst ergnus zones are a cktail of d snsory & d tactile: d brsh of lips over lng, wet folds, deep prbing xtasies & silences."

"If i tell u tht u hv a beutful bdy, wl u hld it agnst me? Thr r so mny rsons to yearn for u. Luv is jst 1 of thm."

"Lst nite dnces b4 my eys. Whn cn we tango agn? I wnt 2 awkn desirs tht u dnt knw exst."

Poets are not the only people to despair of their trade, with every Tom, Dick and Harry trying his hand at poetry in the new SMS language. There are others. The traditional greeting cards industry, for instance.

Every Valentine's Day, the $62 million greetings card industry enjoys a boom as cards with Cupid, hearts and messages of love make brisk sales. This year, however, industry observers felt that the seductive power of paper cards may not work because of the SMS rage. This has made the cards industry, already reeling from the growing use of e-cards, wake up to the threat posed by SMS.

According to industry officials, Christmas, New Year's Day and Valentine's Day card sales account for over 30 percent of the industry's annual sales. "One year ago, it was e-cards that created a major impact on the greeting cards industry. Now, youth are increasingly turning toward SMS," said Vijayant Chhabra, director (marketing) of Archies Greetings and Gifts Ltd. "While it is too early to judge the likely impact of SMS on this year's Valentine's Day, we hope that customers use SMS as a supplement to cards and not as a mode of communication in itself," he told Indo-Asian News Service.

Archies, which has a 40 percent market share in the cards industry, has seen its net profit tumble in the last few quarters. The company reported a net profit of Rs 35 million in the quarter ended December 2001, down from Rs 45 million a year ago. The greetings card industry has also been affected by the severe economic downturn, with some companies saying business is down by 50 percent. Analysts say that SMS, on the other hand, is experiencing rapid growth because of the low cost of messaging, its ease of use in noisy environments, unobtrusive communication during meetings and roaming agreements across nations. "The main reason why mobile phone users are adapting to the messaging culture is cost. A simple paper greeting card is 10 times the price of an SMS message," said an industry analyst with a management consultancy firm. "The cost and speed of the service are turning people away from the plain old greeting cards. We have seen that recently during Diwali and New Year's Day."

References

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Chapter IV

A Brief Overview of the New Media and the emergence of mobile Technology

Over the past few years, one is increasingly able to detect the emergence of empirical approaches to the study of new media as the current dominant paradigm. An empirics of new media describes the various forms, objects, experiences and artworks that constitute new media. The empirical desire to fix all that is virtual into concrete is coextensive with a certain weariness, boredom or distrust of the excesses of "postmodern theory" that came to characterise much work going on in media and cultural studies and contemporary art during the 80s and 90s. Work carried out in sociology, international relations, and architecture has also taken this empirical turn.

These fields all share a desire to ground their objects of study, to retrieve them from the ravages of "speculative theory", and in so doing, perhaps begin a process of reconstructing or securing disciplinary identities. Arguably, all of this coincides with the perceived displacement of national and local communities wrought by communications media such as satellite TV, the Internet, and the mobile phone. Very real displacement across social scales accompanies the structural transformations of national and regional economies in a post-Soviet era in which populations have become increasingly mobile at transnational levels as professional or unskilled labour, as refugees, or as tourists.

It is the task of empirical studies to describe and analyse these various transformations, yet to delimit such work to the scholastic mode of production is to overlook the ways in which such research corroborates the interests of capital which, in the corporatisation of universities, finds the current empirical paradigm as the new frontier of instrumental reason. Researchers, or information workers, in many instances are providing data analysis that has commercial applications in ascertaining consumer habits and, in the case of new media studies, there is the attempt to foreclose the myriad ways in which users engage with media forms and content. It's all quite desperate. And it's all related to a quest to capture markets.

The shift in media studies and other disciplines to a non-reflective and non-reflexive empirical mode is perhaps best accounted for by paying attention to the shift that has occurred in the conditions of production associated with intellectual labour within a neoliberal paradigm. What we see in this mode is a pressure for intellectual practices to become accountable. This pressure is not motivated by ethical reasons, which includes the delivery of knowledge and engagement with teaching and research in ways that are responsive both to their own disciplinary circumstances and to those who are subjects within a particular institution and its disciplinary formations. Rather, there is a need for the products of intellectual labour – intellectual property coded as a commodity object – to be accountable to the laws of exchange value.

The neoliberal imaginary seeks to subject all socio-cultural practices to the laws of the market, which are one manifestation, albeit limited, of the logic of capital. As such, a technique of verification is required, and the humanity has turned to the sciences for such a tool. This is hardly surprising, since the sciences have long held a relationship with industry, which sees the output of labour within the sciences as holding commercial and industrial application. A perception dominates within academe that assumes vulgar empirics to be the technique that best enables intellectual labour to be measured, quantified and reported in terms of stasis or stability.

The key problem of an empirics of new media aesthetics resides in its failure, in a number of instances, to understand that the aesthetics of artworks, software applications and technologies are conditioned by social relations as well as the theoretical paradigms through which analysis proceeds. Technology, as understood by Raymond Williams, is found in the processual dimension of articulation, where the media is but one contingent element that undergoes transformation upon every re-articulation.

This presents a challenge to the empirical turn in net studies, which seeks in vain to pin down a terrain that is made historically redundant prior to its emergence. Empirical approaches to the net, if nothing else, need to work in a reflexive mode that is constantly aware of the conditions attached to funded research, to critique them, to describe the institutional cultures that shape the emergent third paradigm of net studies, and to see the seemingly secure ground of any empirical moment as something which is always interpenetrating with something else.

Processual Aesthetics as a Critique of New Media Empirics

In The Language of New Media, media theorist and artist Lev Manovich undertakes a media archaeology of post-media or software theory. He focuses on a very particular idea about what constitutes the materiality of new media, and hence aesthetics. In excavating a history of the present for new media, Manovich's work is important in that it maps out recent design applications, animation practices, and compositing techniques, for example, that operate in discrete or historically continuous modes. However, Manovich's approach is one that assumes form as a given yet forgets the socio-political arrangements that media forms are necessarily embedded in, and which imbue any visual (not to mention sonic) taxonomy or typology with a code: i.e. a language whose precondition is the possibility for meaning to be produced.

A processual aesthetics of new media goes beyond what is simply seen or represented on the screen. It seeks to identify how online practices are always conditioned by and articulated with seemingly invisible forces, institutional desires and regimes of practice. Furthermore, a processual aesthetics recognises the material, embodied dimensions of net cultures.

When you engage with a virtual or online environment, are you simply doing the same thing as you would in a non-virtual environment, where you might be looking at objects, communicating, using your senses – vision, sound, etc? In other words if the chief argument of the new media empirics lies in the idea that we simply ought to pay close attention to what people "do" on the net and ignore any grander claims about virtual technologies – is this adequate? Is there anything in this "do-ing" which deserves greater analysis?

Do virtual environments simply extend our senses and our actions across space and time, or do they reconstitute them differently? There is a strong argument made for the latter. In the same way that visual culture – especially the cinema – legitimized a certain way of looking at things through techniques such as standardized camera work and continuous camera editing, then virtual technologies re-organize and manage the senses and our modes of perception in similar ways. As Kafka once noted: 'cinema involves putting the eye into uniform'.

Software design, virtual environments, games, and search engines all generate and naturalize certain ways of knowing and apprehending the world. We can find examples of this with database retrieval over linear narrative, hypertext, 3D movement through space as the means to knowledge, editing and selection rather than simple acquisition, etc.

So if empirics can record that we have virtual conversations, look up certain sites, and so forth – it doesn't consider the way we combine visual and tactile perceptions in certain ways and in certain contexts to allow for distinct modes of understanding the world. Nor does a new media empirics inquire into the specific techniques by which sensation and perception are managed. This is the work of processual aesthetics.

A theory of processual aesthetics can be related back to cybernetics and systems theory and early models of communication developed by mathematician and electrical engineer Claude Shannon in the 1940s. This model is often referred to as the transmission model, or sender-message-receiver model. It is a process model of communication, and for the most part it rightly deserves its place within introduction to communications courses since it enables a historical trajectory of communications to be established.

However, as we all know it holds considerable problems because it advances a linear model of communication flows, from sender to receiver. And this of course just isn't the way communication proceeds – there's always a bunch of noise out there that is going to interfere with the message, both in material and immaterial ways, and in terms of audiences simply doing different things with messages and technologies than the inventors or producers might have intended.

The point to take from this process model, however, is that it later developed to acknowledge factors of noise or entropy (disorder and deterioration), once in the hands of computer scientists and anthropologists such as Norbert Weiner and Gregory Bateson. As such, it shifted from a closed system to an open system of communication. In doing so, it becomes possible to acknowledge the ways in which networks of communication flows operate in autopoietic ways whereby media ecologies develop as self-generating, distributed informational systems.

A processual aesthetics of media culture enables things not usually associated with each other to be brought together into a system of relations. A processual media theory is constituted within and across spatio-temporal networks of relations, of which the communications medium is but one part, or actor. Aesthetic production is defined by transformative iterations, rather than supposedly discrete objects in commodity form. Processual aesthetics is related to the notion of the sublime, which is 'witness to indeterminacy'. Processual aesthetics of new media occupy what philosophers of science Ilya Prigogine and Isabelle Stengers call a 'dissipative structure' of nonlinear, random relationships.

The concept of process undermines the logic of the grid, of categories, of codings and positions, and it does so inasmuch as the realm of distinctions and that which precede these orders of distinction are in fact bound together on a continuum of relations as partial zones of in-distinction. Categories are only ever provisional, and emerge to suit specific ends, functions, interests, disciplinary regimes and institutional realities. To this end, the mode of empirical research that predominates in the humanities and sciences – and in particular current research on new media – needs to be considered in terms of not what categories say about their objects, but rather, in terms of what categories say about the movement between that which has emerged and the conditions of possibility. Herein lie the contingencies of process.

The network is not 'decomposable into constituent points'. That is what a non-reflective and non-reflexive empirics of new media, of informational economies and network societies, in its reified institutional mode attempts to do. The network is not a 'measurable, divisible space'. Rather, it holds a 'nondecomposable' dimension that always exceeds – or better, subsists within – what in the name of non-reflexive empirics are predetermined regimes of quantification, which, as Massumi has it, 'is an emergent quality of movement'.

This is not to say that things never occupy a concrete space. An analytics of space (and time), if it is to acknowledge the complexity of things, cannot take as its point of departure the state of arrest of things. Instead, attention needs to take a step back (or perhaps a step sideways, and then back within), and inquire into the preconditions of stasis. And this does not mean occupying a teleological position, which seeks to identify outcomes based on causes. Or as Massumi puts it, the 'emphasis is on process before signification or coding'.

 The Aesthetics of News Corp

We are yet to see what capital can become. So goes the 'new economy' mantra as its proponents go about laying claim to the future, which is synonymous with the 'free market'. Mastery of the latter supposedly determines the former. Bubble economies – exemplified in our time most spectacularly with dotcom mania and the tech wreck in April 2000, which saw the crash of the NASDAQ – are perhaps one index of the future-present whereby the accumulation of profit proceeds by capturing what is otherwise a continuous flow of information. Information flows are shaped by myriad forces that in themselves are immaterial and invisible in so far as they do not register in the flow of information itself. The condition of motion nevertheless indelibly inscribes information with a speculative potential, enabling it to momentarily be captured in the form of trading indices.

Michael Goldberg's recent installation at Sydney's Artspace – catchingafallingknife.com – nicely encapsulates aspects of a processual media theory.  The installation combines various software interfaces peculiar to the information exchanges of day traders gathered around electronic cash flows afforded by the buying and selling of shares in Murdoch's News Corporation. With $50 000 backing from an anonymous consortium of stock market speculators cobbled together from an online discussion list of day traders, Goldberg set himself the task of buying and selling News Corp shares over a three week period in October-November last year.

Information flows are at once inside and outside the logic of commodification. The software design of market charts constitutes an interface between what Felix Stalder describes as informational 'nodes' and 'flows'. The interface functions to 'capture and contain' (Massumi, 71) – and indeed make intelligible – what are otherwise quite out of control finance flows. But not totally out of control: finance flows, when understood as a self-organised system, occupy a space of tension between "absolute stability" and "total randomness". Too much emphasis upon either condition leaves the actor-network system open to collapse. Evolution or multiplication of the system depends upon a constant movement or feedback loops between actors and networks, between nodes and flows.

Referring to the early work of political installation artist Hans Haacke, Goldberg explains this process in terms of a 'real time system': 'the artwork comprises a number of components and active agents combining to form a volatile yet stable system. Well, that may also serve as a concise description of the stock market Whether or not the company's books are in the black or in the red is of no concern – the trader plays a stock as it works its way up to its highs and plays it as the lows are plumbed as well. All that's important is liquidity and movement. "Chance" and "probability" become the real adversaries and allies'.

Trading or charting software can be understood as stabilising technical actors that gather informational flows, codifying such flows in the form of 'moving average histograms, stochastic, and momentum and volatility markers' (Goldberg). Indicators of this sort also provide the basis for 'technical analysis', which is concerned with discerning the movement of prices according to the supply and demand of particular shares. 'Fundamental analysis', on the other hand, looks 'at the realities underlying price movements – broad economic developments, government policies, demography, corporate strategies'. Such market indicators are then rearticulated or translated in the form of online chatrooms, financial news media, and mobile phone links to stockbrokers, eventually culminating in the trade. In capturing and modelling finance flows, trading software expresses various regimes of quantification that makes possible a value-adding process through the exchange of information within the immediacy of an interactive real time system. Such a process is distinct from 'ideal time', in which 'the aesthetic contemplation of beauty occurs in theoretical isolation from the temporal contingencies of value'.

An affective dimension of aesthetics is registered in the excitement and rush of the trade; biochemical sensations in the body modulate the flow of information, and are expressed in the form of a trade. As Goldberg puts it in a report to the consortium mid-way through the project after a series of poor trades based on a combination of technical and fundamental analysis: 'It's becoming clearer to me that in trading this stock one often has to defy logic and instead give in, coining a well-worn phrase, to irrational exuberance'. Here, the indeterminacy of affect subsists within the realm of the processual, whereby a continuum of relations defines the event of the trade. A continuity of movement prevails. Yet paradoxically, such an affective dimension is coupled with an intensity of presence where each moment counts; the art of day trading is constituted as an economy of precision within a partially enclosed universe.

However, the borders of a processual system are also open to the needs and interests of extrinsic institutional realities. The node of the gallery presents what is otherwise a routine operation of a day trader as a minor event, one that registers the growing indistinction between art and commerce. Interestingly, the event-space of the gallery expresses the regularity of day trading with a difference that submits to the spatio-temporal dependency news media has on the categories of 'news worthiness'.

A finance reporter for Murdoch's The Australian newspaper gives Goldberg's installation a write-up. Despite the press package which details otherwise, the journalist attempts to associate Goldberg's trading capital with an Australia Council grant (which financed the installation costs) as further evidence of the moral and political corruption amongst the 'chattering classes'. In this instance of populist rhetoric, the distinction between quality and tabloid newspapers is brought into question. The self-referentiality that defines the mode of organisation and production within the mediasphere prompts a journalist from Murdoch's local Sydney tabloid, the Daily Telegraph, to submit copy on the event. Unlike the dismissive account in The Australian and the general absence of attention to the project by Arts commentators, Goldberg notes how the Daily Telegraph report made front page of the Business section (rather than the News or Entertainment pages), in full colour, with his picture alongside the banner headline 'Profit rise lifts News'. The headline for Goldberg's installation was smaller: 'Murdoch media the latest canvas for artist trader'.

Here, the system of relations between art and commerce also indicates the importance narrative or storytelling has in an age of information economies. Whether the price of stocks go up or down, profit value is shaped not, of course, by the kind of political critique art might offer, but rather by the kind of spin a particular stock can generate. Goldberg's installation discloses various operations peculiar to the aesthetics of day trading, clearly establishing a link between narrative, economy, time and risk, performance or routine practice and the mediating role of design and software aesthetics. catchingafallingknife.com demonstrates that it is the latter – a theory of software – that still requires much critical attention. And unlike most players in the new economy, Goldberg's installation was an exercise in accountability and transparency.

Conclusion

There is a process at work in all this, part of which involves a linear narrative of stabilization by structural forces. Massumi explains it this way: 'The life cycle of the object is from active indeterminacy, to vague determination, to useful definition (tending toward the ideal limit of full determination)' (214). Yet this seemingly linear narrative or trajectory, if that's what it can be termed, is in no way a linear process. Quite the opposite. It is circular, or is constituted through and within a process of feedback whereby the technical object, in its nominated form, feeds back and transforms its conditions of possibility, which can be understood as 'the field of the emergence' (8).

So, it is suggested that a processual media theory can enhance existing approaches within the field, registering the movement between that which has emerged as an empirical object, meaning or code, and the various conditions of possibility. A processual media theory inquires into that which is otherwise rendered as invisible, yet is fundamental to the world as we sense it. Thus, processual media theory could be considered as a task engaged in the process of translation.

India is a developing country and it is on the way of rising economically developed. But there are basic changes in the mind of the young people regarding the uses of mobile phones in the uses of different people of different economic zones, different classes and different castes and the uses are accordingly different. It becomes a mania among the young generations and middle aged people for using mobile for different purposes, its may be for quick communication or for real love or for making love or for sex or for spiritual themes or for criminal activities. It is very interesting to note that the children and the teenagers are very much interested for the different uses of mobile. It becomes a mania among the Indian people to use mobile for different purposes. After a few years, mobile will become a part and parcel of Indian people. Though it has some facilities but it will spoil the Indian value system and the children and young generations will become the victim of bad influence of mobile. This is the high time people should conscious about the good and useful uses of mobile otherwise it will become the tears of the future generations.

[1] Brown, B., Green, N. and R. Harper (Eds.). (2001). Wireless World: Social and Interactional Aspects of the Mobile Age. London, Springer.

[2] Höflich, J.R. und J Gebhardt (Hrsg.) (2005): Mobile Kommunikation: Perspektiven und Forschungsfelder. Berlin u.a.: Peter Lang.

[3] Höflich, J.R. und J Gebhardt (Hrsg.) (2005): Mobile Kommunikation: Perspektiven und Forschungsfelder. Berlin u.a.: Peter Lang.

[4] Katz, J. E., (Ed.) (2003). Machines That Become Us: The Social Context of Personal Communication Technology. New Brunswick, NJ, Transaction Publishers.

[5] Höflich, J. R. and J. Gebhardt (Eds.) (2003). Vermittlungskulturen im Wandel. Brief - E-Mail - SMS. [Changing Cultures of Mediation. Letter - E-Mail - SMS]. Frankfurt: Peter Lang

[6]Saffronisation essentially refers to the fanaticism with which certain politicians are propagating ultra Hindutva in the present days.  What took place in Gujarat on December 12 was a battle between a powerful myth and a passive and inactive reason, of which the myth came out victoriously. Modi, the mythmaker, proved himself to be an effective embodiment of the spirit of Savarkar in mythicising the political consciousness of the people of Gujarat. His sensitivity to the Hindu feelings and his loyalty to the Hindu community are exemplified by the Sangh Parivar including the Prime Minister Vajpayee and the Deputy Prime Minister L.K. Advani. He is presented as the saviour of Hindus who is capable of establishing the Hindu Rashtra. With all these what is interesting is that Modi himself is made a myth.

[7] Gender relations in India (as everywhere else) are patriarchal - that is, they reflect and perpetuate a hierarchy where women are subordinate to men. Women's subordination is reflected in inequality and differences between women and men within the family and community, as well as in all social, economic, cultural and political interactions and relationships between people.

3.Mankekar, Purnima 1999 Screening, Culture, Viewing Politics: An Ethnography of Television, Womanhood  Nation in Postcolonial India. Durham: Duke University Press.

[8] Decolonisation was another political development that had important consequences with respect to migration. In the short period between 1922 and 1975 the colonies of England, France, the Netherlands, Portugal, Germany, Italy and Belgium became independent states. The first signs of revolt against colonialism were already present before the First World War, but during the interbellum resistance grew to the extent that after the Second World War it could no longer be ignored. The Allies had fought the First and Second World War under the flag of the right of self-determination. Also, Wester n countries had been beaten by Japan, a country of coloured people, and had at any rate lost much prestige. France and England had already loosened the bond between motherland and colony in the thirties, but these reformations did not reach far enough. Independence became the only solution and was eventually granted to the remaining colonies between 1950 and 1975, often preceded by armed conflict

[9] As quoted in an interview with ‘The Statesman’ 15^th April, 2004

[10] Potter, W. James (1997), 'The problem of indexing risk of viewing television aggression', Critical Studies in Mass Communication 14, Sept.

[11] As quoted in an interview on children’s media habits, ‘The Statesman’ 27^th December, 2001

[12] As quoted in ‘The Week’ in  the article ‘IT Booms’ 24^th August, 2005

[13] As quoted in ‘India Today: Pot Pourri Generation’ 15^th September issue, 2005