As yesterday's report by The National's Samanth Subramanian demonstrated, the excitement surrounding India's Freedom 251 smartphone – to be sold for just 251 rupees, or less than Dh14 – has collapsed into outrage, once it became apparent that no phones had yet been manufactured.
Given that the company behind the smartphone has yet to build any factories, or even be certified by the Indian government to sell its products, it appears unlikely that this particular phone will soon connect to a network.
That is a shame, because there is clearly an appetite for such a device. The company appears to have collected 17.5 million rupees in payments online and registered an astonishing 60 million people who want this low-priced smartphone.
Indeed, there are many in India who could benefit from a cheap phone. The recent controversy over Facebook seeking to launch free Wi-Fi (albeit with access to only a few websites) has highlighted how India’s poor could benefit from access to information via the internet. But there is, in fact, an easier way. Cheap working smartphones would be a much easier way to empower millions of poor people in India’s rural regions.
Smartphones have significant advantages over seeking to build a new Wi-Fi network. For one thing, the infrastructure essentially exists. Mobile phone towers dot the landscape across India. For the rural poor, useful information – weather, farm prices and so on – could be accessed via data services (which work across the telephone network).
There is another reason for wanting India’s poor to access the internet, and that is combatting corruption. Every interaction with Indian bureaucracy is another opportunity for the poorest to be stung for chai pani (“tea water”, slang for a bribe). By limiting the number of interactions with officialdom and moving Indian bureaucracy online, India’s poorest (and everyone else) will be richer, in information and in their pockets.
