卦Trigram 2.0
Asian Snowcrash

Are we heading for a global recession? All of the signs are that the US economy is now in recession. The next thing we find out is how much knock-on damage this will cause in developing markets. Are the Asian markets sufficiently decoupled from the US economy for India-China trade to keep everyone here afloat? We’ll find out in the next few months.

This recession, which was sparked off by the US housing bubble and compounded by bankers’ recklessness, has been a long time coming. Steven Roach at Morgan Stanley was warning about it even before I took my MBA, so it’s not as if we haven’t seen it coming.

What has come up swiftly and without much warning, and may yet bite us hard, is the shortage of food staples - rice, especially. With a number of media sources warning of food riots and social instability as a consequence, this is likely to be tough all around.

The people who are going to suffer the most are the ones Niti is investigating at the bottom of the pyramid - and this is going to be very different from anything we’ve seen before.

I remember, as a child, seeing the pictures of the famine in Cambodia, and the appeals for public donations. I helped to organize a Blue Peter Bring & Buy sale at my primary school to contribute. Soon afterwards, the focus shifted to Ethiopia. Here I oversimplify horribly, of course, but in essence the famine victims here had to be essentially passive, waiting for external food aid to arrive.

In a lesser case of food shortage, citizens in the old Soviet Union had to opportunistically join queues as soon as they saw one forming, hoping it meant that a delivery of food or other scarce goods had just arrived - even when (famously) they often didn’t know what they were waiting for until they reached the head of the queue. This would just be luck of the draw.

What difference will it make when the poor, who are most desperately affected by food shortages, all have mobile phones? Will governments and aid agencies use it to inform people of deliveries, and in this way alleviate anxiety? Will be see spontaneous, SMS-directed “hunger mobs” flash-forming on the rumour of food availability (either delivery, storage or hoarding)? And what will it mean for us when instead of seeing appeals for donations on TV, the hungry millions are calling us for help personally?

Mao Zedong’s famous dictum says that “the guerrilla lives amongst the people like a fish lives in water”. Without the people, the guerrilla cannot live.

To survive, a large-scale guerrilla movement, or insurgency, must have a message, a purpose, that resonates to at least some degree with the feelings and beliefs of the population in which it exists. There must be enough people who are broadly sympathetic, in order to supply recruits, shelter, and material support.

What does it take to turn the people against the guerrilla?

The people of Afghanistan know what the Taliban are like. The Taliban used to rule the country, and their treatment of women, their bans on popular culture, their public executions, and so on, were not enough to make the people turn against them and stand up to them.

After the American-led invasion, the Taliban were forced to retreat to their heartlands, and the areas of Pakistan where they had deep support. And yet, people there are suddenly prepared to stand up to the Taliban, with force if need be.

What happened?

The Taliban destroyed mobile phone masts.

Claiming that the Pakistani military, and Western armed forces, were tracking militants by locating their phones, the Taliban opted to take down the network - and provoked an immediate and forceful backlash from the ordinary people, for whom the mobile phone has been a life-changing technology. Even the Taliban’s own fighters are angry.

According to Afghanistan’s Minister of Telecommunications:

“The people said please … repair the infrastructure and we will guarantee the security of the tower,” Sangin said. “We believe that if the Taliban continue with these kinds of activities the hatred will increase against them, and as a result we are awaiting a change in their policy.”

Of course, mobile phones are no panacea. We’ve seen plenty of examples of their use to enable terror and death. However, this example clearly shows how the mobile phone is successfully improving the lives of impoverished communities in developing countries, and bringing them the benefits of integration with the wider world.

Just a few photos, taken to test my new Nokia N73; I decided that what I wanted was an affordable phone that can take good quality pictures, and the N73 seemed to fit the bill.

The very first, taken at the counter where I bought the N73. Note the prices of the local-brand phones; even cheaper ones were also available.

Brand names are so important.

Construction and (not so) clear air.

When I was working in the mountains of Lesotho, many moons ago, keeping in touch with people was a major undertaking. For example, my parents were concerned about my welfare - me being 17 at the time, and South Africa not being the most stable country then… and of course, this was before the time of cheap flights, so southern Africa was mentally much further away than it is in these days of mass air travel.

In order to speak to my folks, I had to wait for our truck to leave on its weekly supply run. Assuming that the bridges weren’t out, we would get to the nearest town, Hlotse (usually called Leribe), and then cross the border into the South African town of Ficksburg. I would have to go to the main post office, wait for the one official with an international line in her office to be free, go to her office to make a collect call to my parents, and then wait for them to call back. I could then talk, while the post office lady listened in. Luckily, she was very nice!

Getting a landline - or even a fax or telex - to our base up in the mountains was a dream - I have no idea whether or not they ever got one!

On another personal note, I remember the joy I experienced when I first got access to the internet back in 1994. Coming from a small country town, where information and knowledge were hard to come by. The Net changed all that. Suddenly, I was able to find things out without making a trip to the library in the nearest city; I was able to talk to people on the other side of the world who shared my interests.

The arrival of mobile telephony in developing countries is freeing hundreds of millions of people from the need to make the kind of trips that I had to make, and presenting them with the same kind of liberation that I experienced. What difference will it make to them?

I’m going to be looking at this a lot, particularly with reference to Africa and China. Pointers to more information are welcome!

First of all is this very interesting piece at worldchanging: Africa Calling - SND MNY 2 YR MBL. It’s a very good primer on how mobile banking via handphones is making life much easier for the poor, via services such as MTN Banking. It points out the similarity of this venture to similar successes in South Asia, and Bangladesh’s Grameen Phone in particular. This is the sort of thing that Niti is very interested in… Are there similar services in China? If so, who? If not, why not? What are the design needs for this kind of service? Watch this space for answers to these questions!