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In India, smartphones and cheap data are giving women a voice

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Re: In India, smartphones and cheap data are giving women a voice

#51

Post by cageface »

cageface wrote: post #10
kumarvvr wrote: post #9

Yeah, Data is cheap and smartphones are plenty. Indians are voracious consumers of content and healthy competition has reduced prices to absurdly low levels. I'm in an urban area, with connection from one of the biggest providers. It costs me about 9 USD a month for unlimited data (I mean, about 2 GB a day, BUT, with carry forward, so I have about 250 GB of data to use in my account), unlimited calls and sms. I stopp…

Sounds like it's time to revise some of the advice web developers get about optimizating page sizes for developing markets.

I’ve been on this site since 2009. Unfortunately the level of discourse has been in pretty steady decline over the last few years. Knee jerk responses and mindless downvoting are the norm here now.

For a site that’s ostensibly catering to engineers it’s a sad state of affairs. I can’t say I get much value out of it anymore.

Re: In India, smartphones and cheap data are giving women a voice

#52

Post by managerclass »

blueblisters wrote: post #23

India's female labor participation rate is 20%. In China, it's 60%. Smartphones can help bridge that gap a bit but real progress will probably come from creating safe, well-paying jobs.

TIL China has a higher female labor participation rate than the US. Unexpected.

Re: In India, smartphones and cheap data are giving women a voice

#53

Post by AnHonestComment »

cageface wrote: post #51
cageface wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds like it's time to revise some of the advice web developers get about optimizating page sizes for developing markets.

I’ve been on this site since 2009. Unfortunately the level of discourse has been in pretty steady decline over the last few years. Knee jerk responses and mindless downvoting are the norm here now. For a site that’s ostensibly catering to engineers it’s a sad state of affairs. I can’t say I get much value out of it anymore.

They added shadowbans, too.

Re: In India, smartphones and cheap data are giving women a voice

#54

Post by iguy »

tchalla wrote: post #32
_wldu wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This sounds awesome. Good, affordable connectivity seems to be a basic human right. I wish it was this way everywhere. I'm in the US and can only get 1.5Mbit DSL, for which I pay 90 US dollars a month (with a basic home phone line). That's the only Internet I can get. East Coast USA.

You can not compare two currencies without including the parities. In terms of the US dollar, India has a Purchasing Power Parity of 21.276 as of 2019 [0]. > Purchasing power parities (PPPs) are the rates of currency conversion that try to equalise the purchasing power of different currencies, by eliminating the differences in price levels between countries. The basket of goods and services priced is a sample of all…

I'm not sure PPP is a great measure here.

It works best when comparing people with relatively similar consumption, e.g. asking about the material lives of engineers in east- vs. west-germany. Both had cars, radios, apartments with indoor plumbing, and awful haircuts, but they paid for them with different money. Any exchange rate was basically a fiction, but even if the currencies had been freely traded, these two still couldn't buy each other's goods.

Some people in India have lives similarly comparable to the west, e.g. the class who buy iphones. But the ones who make this super-cheap data interesting really don't. I mean there are riots when the price of onions doubles after a poor harvest. It's difficult to imagine a shared basket of goods which meaningfully captures the comparison here --- between prices experienced by those whose weekly budget can flattened by onions, and people in the US.

Probably a better comparison would simply be to quote daily wages alongside such prices. GDP is about US$5/day, compared to about $175/day in the US.

Re: In India, smartphones and cheap data are giving women a voice

#55

Post by x3c »

RIMR wrote: post #48
x3c wrote: post #12

More than the statistics, it's the stories that open your imagination to the unlock connectivity is bringing. Using WhatsApp to report timber theft is something I would never have guessed.

Personally, using a communications network like WhatsApp to communicate things to each other is maybe the first use case I would have guessed.

More than the abstract notion of it being a communication platform, it's the specific usecases that open your imagination to the unlocks connectivity is bringing. Using WhatsApp to report timber theft is something I would never have guessed.

I thought you'd have guessed the spirit of the comment since you're so adept at guessing.

Re: In India, smartphones and cheap data are giving women a voice

#56

Post by managerclass »

trianglem wrote: post #43
qsort wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there any particular reason why you are assuming that housekeeping and child rearing should be the exclusive responsibility of women? I'm struggling to see any honest point in this comment.

I said saying only 20% of women are involved in labor in India is incorrect. That number is much much higher if you take those into account.

The statistic is saying that 20% of women in India participate in the workforce as it is defined.

Are you trying to say that the 60% of Chinese women includes women who are homemakers and aren't in the workforce as it is defined?

Re: In India, smartphones and cheap data are giving women a voice

#57

Post by iguy »

RIMR wrote: post #47
tchalla wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But the fact that it only costs 9 cents a GB is amazing. 9cents in India would be equivalent to 1.91 USD after taking into account Purchasing Power Parity (OECD 2019). Therefore, you are in effect saying 1.91 USD per GB is amazing. You can not compare values without including purchasing power disparities.

PPP should not have this kind of effect over a renewable globalized asset like data.

It's messy right? I mean you aren't buying global data, you are buying data delivered in a particular town. Some of the costs of providing it are all about the location (e.g. renting land to put up towers) and some aren't at all (e.g. the networking hardware), so it still seems very impressive that they can do it this cheaply.

Re: In India, smartphones and cheap data are giving women a voice

#58

Post by jagmal »

tchalla wrote: post #35
sharadov wrote: post #2

Speech detection is just amazing when you think about illiterate folk, it's a game changer for them. Jio's genius was offering free data plans for a year, getting folks hooked. But the fact that it only costs 9 cents a GB is amazing.

> But the fact that it only costs 9 cents a GB is amazing. 9cents in India would be equivalent to 1.91 USD after taking into account Purchasing Power Parity (OECD 2019). Therefore, you are in effect saying 1.91 USD per GB is amazing. You can not compare values without including purchasing power disparities.

I believe it would be ~9 * 3.5(i.e. fx_rate/ppp)= ~31.5 cents and not 1.91 USD.

Re: In India, smartphones and cheap data are giving women a voice

#59

Post by YinglingLight »

managerclass wrote: post #52
blueblisters wrote: post #23

India's female labor participation rate is 20%. In China, it's 60%. Smartphones can help bridge that gap a bit but real progress will probably come from creating safe, well-paying jobs.

TIL China has a higher female labor participation rate than the US. Unexpected.

The real murky question is if that's desirable.

Re: In India, smartphones and cheap data are giving women a voice

#60

Post by tchalla »

shripadk wrote: post #49
tchalla wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> PPP makes no sense when it comes to comparing data usage between countries. We are not comparing data usage, we are comparing the value of two different currencies. The value of 100 US$ in India is different from that in the US or the EU. In order to normalise the value between two currencies, PPP is used. It doesn't matter what the 100US$ is spent on, data or food.

> We are not comparing data usage, we are comparing the value of two different currencies. The value of 100 US$ in India is different from that in the US or the EU. In order to normalise the value between two currencies, PPP is used. It doesn't matter what the 100US$ is spent on, data or food. But you are comparing value of currencies by comparing two equal goods. That would mean also comparing acquisition of raw mat…

> If PPP is 21.3 (2019 data) between USA and India, a Harley Davidson in India should be 21.3 times cheaper than a Harley Davidson in USA. It isn't. The cost is pretty much the same. So is the case with iPhones. Even if iPhones are manufactured in India it would still cost slightly less than in USA. It will never be 21.3 times cheaper.

PPP does not mean that Harley Davidson in India would be 21.3 times cheaper. It means that the value of Harley Davidson in India in US$ would be equivalent in the US when the price is 21.3x

If you do not like PPP, you can use another metric to normalise prices. But, you can not simply compare two goods in two different currencies by taking an exchange rate. You need a normalisation factor. Every metric has its shortcoming - pick one but don't compare absolutes.

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