Book review: The great Indian phone book: how the cheap cell phone changes business, politics, and daily life

"The Great Indian Phone Book: How The Cheap Cell Phone Changes Business, Politics, and Daily Life." Robin Jeffrey and Assa Doron. Hurst & Company, London. February 2013. --- The cheap mobile phone is arguably the most significant personal communications device in history. In India, where caste hierarchy has reinforced power for generations, the disruptive potential of the mobile phone is even more striking than elsewhere. The book probes the whole universe of the mobile phone from the contests of great capitalists and governments to control radio frequency spectrum to the ways ordinary people build the troublesome, addictive device into their daily lives. Matt Birkinshaw hopes the broad scope and rich empirical detail found in this book will prompt a range of further, narrower, investigations in its wake.