You are emancipating the shirtless... ;)
For India's Traditional Fishermen, Cellphones Deliver a Sea Change
By Kevin Sullivan
Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, October 15, 2006
PALLIPURAM, India -- Babu Rajan pointed off the starboard bow and shouted: "There! There!"
In choppy, gray seas four miles from shore near India's tropical southern tip, Rajan spotted the tinselly sparkle of a school of sardines. He ordered his three dozen crewmen to quickly drop their five-ton net overboard.
Within five minutes, the cellphone hanging around his neck rang.
"Hallo!" he shouted, struggling to hear over the big diesel engines of his 74-foot boat, Andavan. "Medium sized! Medium sized!" he said, estimating the haul for a wholesale agent calling from port, who had heard by cellphone from other skippers that Rajan had just set his nets.
Minutes later Rajan's phone rang again -- another agent at a different port.
"When I have a big catch, the phone rings 60 or 70 times before I get to port," he said.
The cellphone is bringing new economic clout, profit and productivity to Rajan and millions of other poor laborers in India, the world's fastest-growing cellphone market.
more: washingtonpost.com |
