Monday, December 24, 2007

What would you have Mobile Phone or Electricity?


With the political stage heating in the US for the next presidential elections, I thought this might be one of the crazy ideas to the potential candidates.
Politicians in India text (read SMS on mobile phones) to plead for votes on the election day. While some remote locales of the nation still don't have electricity -- but that doesn't mean the politicians cannot reach them on their newly distributed cell phone freebes come election day and request their vote using the power of SMS. Reportedly, about 30 to 40 individuals living in a Dalit village some 50 miles from Sagar in Madhya Pradesh are trudging around 12 miles per day just to get their mobile phones juiced back up for the next 24 hours .

I am not sure if they are getting their value worth since I don't assume they expect informational messages other than the latest cricket scores ( India got thrashed by Australia in the first test match) and latest bollywood movie releases. Everyone wants their attention. And I am sure Nokia is happy since they get to add  yet another set of client to their customer base.(Nokia has 90+% market share). Well  I guess we are not going to see any sign of electricity being piped out to this remote region in the foreseeable future. But as politicans will like to tell you what counts is for the public to first get them those  necessary votes  and then only they can bring in the changes. After all what can be more important than to gather support and mass for a leader  running short of votes
This may appear rather amusing but it is an interesting aspect to the amazing growth of cellphones in India. The facts of this are courtesy of site (Engadget).


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