Socio-economy of Mobile Phone Ownership in India

Paul, Bino; Murti, Ashutosh Bishnu

doi:10.1007/978-981-10-1684-4_9

Cited by 2 publications

(1 citation statement)

References 5 publications

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“…Access relies on having a smartphone, mobile connection and data. Yet the penetration of mobile and smartphones is concentrated in urban areas and in certain States, and ownership is directly linked to socio-economic status (Bino Paul and Murti, 2016). This comes as no surprise in a country that the UN’s Food and Agricultural Organization’s Global Hunger Index describes as having a ‘serious’ level of hunger and a rising child-wasting rate (Global Hunger Index, 2023).…”

Section: Who Will Be Left Behind?mentioning

confidence: 99%

Will the SDGs and the UN Decade of Healthy Ageing Leave Older People Behind?

Vera-Sanso

2023

Progress in Development Studies

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Since the 1950s, multinational institutions have taken a number of positions towards population ageing and later life. In 1994, the World Bank (WB) saw population ageing as a crisis that needed ‘averting’. The United Nations (UN) approach evolved from the individualized, compassionate ageism of 1981 to a developmental, ‘society for all ages’, perspective in 2002. Yet the UN made comparatively little headway. In 2021 the UN launched its Decade of Healthy Ageing to support the 2030 Sustainable Development Agenda’s ‘leave no one behind’ goal. The UN rightly sees ageing as a lifelong, societal and developmental process and strongly supported the evidence that unequal resource distribution is the main contributor to health inequalities across the lifespan. Despite this evidence, the focus is now on a biomedical framing of impaired health and on a multi-stakeholder approach that emphasizes the Silver Economy’s economic potential. The first two years of the decade saw significant efforts to generate private-sector support. While the Decade of Healthy Ageing is still young, there is much good, harm and missed opportunity that can happen in a decade, justifying early consideration of what the Silver Economy’s biomedical approach will do for older people in low and middle income countries (LMICs).

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Section: Who Will Be Left Behind?mentioning

confidence: 99%

Will the SDGs and the UN Decade of Healthy Ageing Leave Older People Behind?

Vera-Sanso

2023

Progress in Development Studies

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Street Vendors Using Smartphones for Digital Payments: A Qualitative Study of Digital Opportunities and Inequalities From Kashmir Region in India

Mir,

Wani

2023

Journal of Asian and African Studies

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There are around 4.9 million street vendors in India, a large part of the country’s informal sector workforce. Linked to India’s focus on digital economy and promotion of digital transactions, there is growing popularity of mobile payment (m-payment) applications or m-wallets such as PhonePe, Google Pay, Paytm, Bhim, and so on. This is also the case with street vendors, and the sight of a street vendor with a QR barcode for accepting payments is not uncommon. How do street vendors make sense of smartphone-based transactions in their lives? In qualitative interviews with street vendors in Srinagar city in Kashmir region in India, a complex picture emerged. Street vendors were mostly illiterate or had limited education, but were quickly adopting m-payments. For online transactions, QR barcode stickers were mostly displayed on carts of street vendors in Kashmir. However, at the same time, vendors had little or no understanding of these m-payment apps. They had limited language skills and had to take help of literate friends or family members to check transactions or to get over difficulties in operation. The use of these m-payment apps or m-wallet smartphone applications introduced new opportunities associated with digital payments. However, gaps in digital skills are pronounced, and remained a major challenge for the street vendors. During the course of fieldwork in Srinagar (2022–2023), we also observed that m-payment companies introduced technological solutions such as speaker-based instant audio confirmations for payments such as Paytm Soundbox and PhonePe Smartspeaker. This is indicative of the continuous tracking of the informal sector usage by such companies, and clearly they are aware and receptive of such gaps. However, market-linked technological solutions only address operational gaps, and do not address the underlying causes, including illiteracy, and knowledge or skill gaps. Such observations can be helpful in planning and implementation of government policies for street vendors in India.

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Socio-economy of Mobile Phone Ownership in India

Cited by 2 publications

References 5 publications

Will the SDGs and the UN Decade of Healthy Ageing Leave Older People Behind?

Will the SDGs and the UN Decade of Healthy Ageing Leave Older People Behind?

Street Vendors Using Smartphones for Digital Payments: A Qualitative Study of Digital Opportunities and Inequalities From Kashmir Region in India

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