Indian Government Mulls Giving Away Mobile Phones To the Poor 104
jalfreize writes "The Indian government is finalizing a $1.2 billion plan to hand out free mobile phones to the poorest Indian families (around six million households, according to some estimates). The Times of India reports: 'Top government managers involved in formulating the scheme want to sell it as a major empowerment initiative... While the move will ensure contact with the beneficiaries of welfare programmes (sic) ..., there is also a view the scheme will provide an opportunity for the (government) to open a direct line of communication with a sizable population that plays an active role in polls.'"
Re:No electricity... (Score:5, Interesting)
Something I found interesting: in rural areas in africa and india there is now such a thing as traveling charger and internet access men.
someone comes round the village once a week with a small generator or similar and often a few other things like a satalite dish and tools for some some repairs to electronics.
He comes round, people pay a few pence to charge their phones or some other small electronics or to send a few emails. (a very important service since it means families can keep in contact when a few of the kids have gone off to work in the cities)
It's hard to organise food, clean water, sanitation and housing without people being able to talk to each other.
Stupid Indian government (Score:2, Interesting)
The Indian government is solely responsible for the poverty in India at this point - all the insane rules and regulations prevent people from investing in India. Starting a business in India is ridiculously difficult compared to other parts of Asia, especially China. Indian government is extremely corrupt in a way that prevents competition and prevents business.
Government "providing phones to the poor" - what a ridiculous concept.
Do you know who is the best to provide for the poor? The businessmen who are looking for profit. How come the phones were impossible to own when it was a government monopoly with AT&T for most of the last century, but then when the gov't allowed the competition, all of a sudden the people could finally own phones, phones became cheap, ubiquitous, there were all these new features. From answering machines and radio phones to buttons on the phones, different colours (not just your beige). Eventually fax machines, modems and cell phones and now smart phones.
Everybody has more than one phone, while the first cell phones could only be afforded by the top wealthiest individuals, who could pay a few thousand bucks for one and then hundreds or thousands per month in usage fees.
Cell phones are so cheap today, if competition and business was actually allowed to exist in a FREE market (without government interference) in India, there would be even cheaper phones there, maybe a few dollars for a phone, maybe 1 dollar, who knows.
Government is going to do it? How? It's NOT going to create a better cheaper phone, it's going to pay more for some existing phone, it's going to give some monopoly license to some company that has people in government and it's going to overpay obviously, while interfering with the free market further, reducing the competition with this government subsidy.
Eventually the people in India won't PAY for the cell phone, so it means almost no cell phone retailer will exist in India, and so the cell phones in India will be ridiculously expensive - subsidised by taxes and inflation, borrowing (taxes + interest) and so instead of a couple of bucks for a phone it will be the destruction of economy.
Well, they won't destroy the economy just with this program, it's what they do overall that is the same thing as with these phones that will prevent their economy from rising.
Poverty in India? It's the government that causes is, like all poverty around the world. It's the governments of those nations that cause it and prevent it from being reduced by the competition, free market, vibrant businesses started by individual entrepreneurs without gov't interference.
Re:why is it programmes (sic)? (Score:2, Interesting)
What do you expect from someone who spells his own name wrong?
He probably answers the phone and pretends to be from Newcastle, the fucking cunt.
Re:why is it programmes (sic)? (Score:4, Interesting)
When TV & radio listings were first printed regularly in the (London) Times in the 1930s, the listings were headed thus: "Television and Radio Programmes". But if you read news reports on the topic you'd see that "programme" was used in its traditional sense, i.e. this is a list of the programme of events. The individual shows they struggled to give a name to, as "show" or "series" hadn't gained wide usage (new technology after all).
But eventually that heading stuck and people interpreted it to mean "programmes" as in "a list of programmes on today". So programme gradually gained traction in the UK as the term for an individual edition of a show. Well into the 60s the Times was still heading its listings in the same way, and by then the term was in widespread use.
Of course in later years, the computer program would come into being, and as much of the theory and early development came from the USA, their spelling stuck when describing a set of instructions interpreted by a computer. That almost goes back to the original meaning of a distinct set of events addressed as a whole. But it means that in the UK we are now saddled with "program" to describe a set of computer instructions and "programme" to describe a single edition of a TV or radio show (and indeed a magazine sold at music concerts or sports events, or a set of individual events combined to make a programme).
I'm not sure but I don't think "program" is used heavily in the US to describe TV shows, and it's an interesting example of how new technology can change the use of long-established words, even in just one part of the English-speaking world.