Comments on: The fallacy of comparing toilets in homes and mobile telephone penetration http://lirneasia.net/2011/10/the-fallacy-of-comparing-toilets-in-homes-and-mobile-telephone-penetration/ a regional ICT policy and regulation think tank active across the Asia Pacific Mon, 20 May 2013 12:57:36 +0000 hourly 1 By: When Worlds Collide #43: Toilets or Telephones? That’s the Wrong Question! | When Worlds Collide, by Nalaka Gunawardene http://lirneasia.net/2011/10/the-fallacy-of-comparing-toilets-in-homes-and-mobile-telephone-penetration/comment-page-1/#comment-57314 When Worlds Collide #43: Toilets or Telephones? That’s the Wrong Question! | When Worlds Collide, by Nalaka Gunawardene Sun, 25 Nov 2012 00:36:55 +0000 http://lirneasia.net/?p=12169#comment-57314 [...] He has recently done that for Sri Lanka, using data amassed by the Household Income and Expenditure Survey 2009/10 conducted by the Department of Census and Statistics covering a countrywide sample of 22,500 households. It collected data on whether households have mobiles, fixed phones, or both, along with data on toilets for household’s exclusive use. (Report at: http://www.tiny.cc/HIES910) [...]

]]> By: Nalaka Gunawardene http://lirneasia.net/2011/10/the-fallacy-of-comparing-toilets-in-homes-and-mobile-telephone-penetration/comment-page-1/#comment-46032 Nalaka Gunawardene Fri, 21 Oct 2011 00:41:31 +0000 http://lirneasia.net/?p=12169#comment-46032 The Development Circle — by which I mean the charmed set of people comprising mostly researchers and civil society activists who are into do-gooding for the poor — has a one-track, unimaginative approach to their own notion of development. They insist that people living in poverty must first meet their basic needs of food, shelter, medicine and sanitation before such people can even consider other other amenities including communications. Many people at the bottom of the pyramid themselves don’t share this narrow view. This ‘deviation’ from the lofty ‘prescription’ rather annoys the Development Set, which then calls poor people names such as ‘uneducated’ or ‘misdirected’ — suggesting such people are not able to choose ‘what is good for them’!

Some years ago, it was fashionable to compare the number of television sets and toilets in India, which too is an unrealistic comparison. Unicef was leading this line of talk, which other opinion leaders picked up – see example here from 2003:
http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2003-10-14/patna/27212910_1_total-sanitation-campaign-sanitation-project-toilets

Perhaps we should reopen the definition of ‘basic needs’. Useful in this context is a remark attributed to Nelson Mandela. In 1995, one year after he became President and a year after Vodafone and MTN started mobile phone services in South Africa, he had called communications a basic need. This is mentioned in “You Can Hear Me Now: How Microloans and Cell Phones are Connecting the World” by Nicholas P. Sullivan (John Wiley & Sons, 2007). See page on Google Books at: http://books.google.com/books?id=INFnibQiQM8C&pg=PR24&lpg=PR24&dq=communication+a+basic+human+need+Sam+Pitroda+Mandela&source=bl&ots=XIHPHZx5RW&sig=rwVgl3H3OTirOQ3LbZkLBP2QckA&hl=en&ei=IL2gTuHHHMbnrAeM_8jZAg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CBwQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q&f=false

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