MOBILE PHONE TO MOBILE IDENTITY

“Sir, your mobile number please!” That was the person at the billing desk of a shoe shop recently, when I had entered to pick up a pair of bathroom slippers. “I don’t want to be included in any promotional schemes”, I casually replied. “But this is not for any promotional scheme but just for registering our buyer’s identity. We collect all our customers’ mobile number simply for identification.” I realized that I had completely missed how my mobile phone number has started representing my identity, without notifying me. Many like me; might have missed this but mobile identity is already unique worldwide. Companies use mobile phone numbers as their primary customer identifier. The time has come to change the slogan from “I shop therefore I am” to “I have a mobile phone number therefore I am.”

Fig.1: I have a mobile phone number, therefore I am.

I, like many of you, thought that within the last one and half decade, mobile technology has grown so wonderfully. I bought my first mobile phone in 2001.  It was a Siemens c35i - a small one. You could even keep it in your shirt pocket. Though I never really understood the function of that “i” part, I was happy to be connected 24*7 with my family and friends. However, since then much water has flown. I remember the advertisements of those big TV remote like mobile phones on television, when mobile was just introduced in this country for primarily the rich. Once Jaspal Bhatti, a renowned TV comedian of 1980s, showed how people on the streets could be fooled with a TV remote if one can act as if s/he is carrying a mobile phone. Carrying a mobile phone was a status symbol in those days. People carrying mobile phones used to get extra attention by others. I remember in early 2000, while dining in Udupi restaurant at Munirka with a group of friends from JNU, we promised that one day we would come back to Udupi with our mobile phones and keep our phones on the table before calling the waiters to place the order.

Fig.2: Evolution of the Mobile Phone

In the last one and half decade, mobile phones evolved from big to small and back to big sizes. Presently, it has become a Palmtop Computer.  And I am sure that it is not the end of it, though I am not the right person to speak on the technological revolution of mobile phones, but the social meaning of it.

Fig.3: Today’s Smart Phones...

Let me share another recent interesting experience of mine. My wife had got a new smart phone last year. Consequently, she asked her mobile service provider to replace her old sim with a nano sim, which was compatible with her new phone. Before her new nano sim had been activated, the service for her old sim was stopped for a few hours. In the meantime, she realized that she has to urgently transfer the registration fee for attending an international conference. These days, as you know, transferring money to a particular account is no big deal. You don’t have to visit your bank for it and can do this anytime - day or night. You just have to log in to your bank account online, register your payee’s account. And then once the payee’s account is registered, you transfer the amount through a simple click. However, there is a catch. Once you create a payee account, the bank needs your final approval, which is done through a onetime password to be sent to your registered mobile number. After undergoing the whole process she realised that she couldn’t transfer the money unless her new sim was activated. We realised that day; that if you don’t possess a mobile phone number you simply don’t exist. You need a mobile phone number to pay your television cable bill, gas bill, electricity bill and many other bills; all being integral part of your everyday life.

But believe me; I have never looked at my mobile from that perspective. In the mid 90s, when mobile service had been introduced in this country, many of us thought that it would be an excellent mobile communication device. After I had finished my final BA examination in late 1989, I set out for a month long tour to Rajasthan with a group of friends from Siliguri. I remember; I was carrying a bunch of postcards with me. Whenever I reached a new place in Rajasthan, I dropped a postcard to my parents to inform them that I’m fine and alive. Even in early to mid 1990s, before the STD telephone booths became so popular all over India, I used to send telegraphic one liner to my parents, “reached Trivandrum safely stop Got hostel room.” 

The public telephone booths across India and landline telephone connections at our homes; even in small towns in 1990s, changed our lives completely.  We used to stand in the long queue at 11 in the night to avail the 75% discount on long distance calls. This was a common scene in front of all telephone booths in those days. Eventually, mobile telephone revolutionized our lives. The text messaging soon replaced all personal telegraphic messages. And a mobile telephone in your hand meant you were always connected to your family, friends and office. In 2005, when I was travelling back to Delhi from Udaipur, after reaching the airport, I was informed that the flight has been delayed by 5 hours. It took a second to inform my wife in Delhi not to wait for me for dinner. However, today in the age of smart phones you don’t even need to inform your wife, as she will automatically receive the update, if you already had shared your itinerary with her.

Fig.4: Telephone booths of early 1990s

So as you see, your mobile phone gradually progressed from a simple wireless telephonic device to a camera, your personal music player and finally to your personal secretary. You require this to book a cab, to find your way in a new city and definitely to make a bank transaction. But the element that I missed in a mobile telephone is the key in making this discussion today; is its capacity of personifying you. Its not just a telephone number any more, its your personal telephone number. The number eventually becomes the extension of your ‘self’ and represents your identity to the world system. A study "Unique in the Crowd: The privacy bounds of human mobility" conducted by MIT in 2013 shows that its so easy to determine an individual's personal identity through analyzing cell phone data. Mobile phone is a device that you control. This means that it is easier to assert your identity both online and in the physical world—and perhaps harder for the fraudsters to imitate you.

Fig.5: Your Phone, Your Identity..

The society and system is continuously determining and producing identities and using those identities and simultaneously constructing our personal and public behaviours. Our identities as human beings have taken different directions and different shapes throughout the history of our evolvement as human beings. It could be our skin colour, our language, an ‘official’ seal or a piece of paper, or the way we write our names short or long. Now its a telephone number that travels with you all the time. 

PERMANENT ADDRESS

Last year while applying for my mother’s passport we got stuck at a particular column, - “Is your permanent address same as your present address?” My mother started living with us in 2009 after my father had passed away.  We were no doubt very confused ... as to how to resolve this issue.

This took me to early 80s, when my elder sister came back unsuccessful, for not being able to complete her registration form for writing the secondary examination under the West Bengal Board of Secondary Education.  In those days, each candidate had to compulsorily fill-in this form before appearing for the secondary examination. An important column of the form was to declare one’s permanent address.  My father came to Calcutta to study, but could never return to his ancestral home in East Bengal post the partition of Bengal in 1947.  Though both of my uncles’ had settled comfortably near Kolkata, my father migrated to North Bengal in search of employment after his graduation in the 50s. On the other hand, my mother was born in Calcutta and travelled along with her physician father and spent her teens in the tea gardens of North Bengal in the 50s as well. They too had their roots in East Bengal.

 Naxalbari of my childhood

Photo Credit: S. Banerjee

Source: www.panoramio.com.jpg

My parents started their life together from a rented accommodation in Naxalbari, where my mother took a job in the local high school. Both my sister and I grew up in several of our rented accommodations in Naxalbari and Siliguri – the nearby town since late 60s. And in early 80s, when the time came to declare a permanent address, we did not have anything else to declare as our address, rather than our small two-room rented accommodation in Siliguri.  In those days one’s identity was linked to one’s permanent address. Naturally, the school authorities asked “But, how come a rented accommodation could be one’s permanent address?”  We were left with no other option but to eventually declare our uncle’s address as our permanent address. Those were the days when I envied my friends, who had their own permanent accommodations or should I say permanent address in Siliguri or elsewhere.

The situation soon changed, when my parents built our home in Siliguri. This was couple of kilometres away from the neighbourhood, where we had been living earlier. Nevertheless, we were more than happy to get our own permanent address.  When I moved to Kerala for higher studies, I remember I proudly declared my permanent address as 21 Gokhale Road, Siliguri.  Later, on shifting to Delhi to pursue my Ph.D. I did not hesitate to ask the university authority to send my certificate to my permanent address -  21  Gokhalle Road, Siliguri. By that time, both my sister and I had left West Bengal leaving our old retired parents back at 21 Gokhale Road. What can we do? For my sister there was perhaps no matching groom left in West Bengal. All of them had left home and settled in different parts of India... Pune, Mumbai, Bengaluru, Gurgaon. And for me, nothing was left in West Bengal, except my memories and the place called home. Perhaps, I had no intention even to go back to West Bengal and fight for my jobs or rights. Anyways, when I applied for my first passport in 2001, I declared 21 Gokhale Road as my permanent address. When, a Delhi Police constable came to check my hostel address at 116 E Brahmapurta Hostel in JNU, I proudly told him to go and check my background at 21 Gokhale Road in my home town – Siliguri.  I was so proud that I had a permanent address a symbol of a permanence and recognizable identity in this country.

21Gokhale Road, Siliguri

Photo Credit: Rajib Nandi

But, we did not have to wait long for another change, when my mother came to live with us in our rented accommodation in East Delhi. Our 21 Goklahe Road house was not locked completely. The ground floor was rented out to a young couple, primarily to look after the property. And the first floor was under lock and key, with the intention of coming back once in a while to spend our holidays.  In the next five years, nothing changed at 21 Gokhale Road, but in the meantime we moved to our newly purchased apartment in Indirapuram.  

Present inhabitation at Indirapuram, Ghaziabad

Photo Credit: Rajib Nandi

Incidentally, we realized that my mother needed to apply for a passport to travel with us to Thailand. The passport application had become much easier these days, on the condition that you should have your basic papers ready with you. You register with the passport site, pay your fees online, take an appointment and be present on a particular day with your original documents at the nearest passport office. However, one thing that I noticed had not changed at all, that is the question on one’s permanent address.  Now we have our own apartment in NCR Delhi, and the old permanent address is under lock and key. But, what should be her permanent address? The place, where my uncle once lived and died? The house she built along with her husband and lived for thirty years before moving on to live with us?  Even this place where we live now, is it our permanent address? I’m sure, we won’t think twice about moving to somewhere else whenever an ‘opportunity’ comes. Do we really have any permanent address? Do the aspiring middle-class families in India have any permanent address any more?  All my cousins have already moved out from their respective permanent addresses to Bangalore, Hyderabad, Pune and further ‘down or above’ to Europe and North America. No one has either any scope or intention to go back and live at the places built by their respective parents or grand parents. The house where no one lives in - could that be our permanent address? Or the flat where we currently live in, without knowing how long we are going to live here?

The (Un) Intentional Wanderer

Where is Permanent Addresss????

The fact is that the urban middle class family does not have any permanent address anymore. Perhaps, they did not have any even earlier. We are the greatest examples of vagabonds roaming around all over without out any defined destination, but still searching for a living place.