India: Mobile phone ownership and toilets

Posted on March 28, 2012 / 2 Comments

In 2001, half of Indian households (50.4%) did not own any of the specified modes of communication- radio/ transistor, television, telephone. 10 years later, this figure is down to just 27.4% of total households. This is just some of the interesting data in the Houselisting and Housing Data 2011 recently released by the Indian government that shows the changing social patterns taking place in India.

For the first time since the census was run, households were asked of computer/laptop ownership. 9.4% of households own computer/laptop- 3.1% of which have access to Internet and 6.3% without Internet access, suggesting that computer ownership remains to be a luxury for a majority of Indians.

63.2% of households now own telephone up from 9.1% in 2001 while TV ownership grew from 31.6% to 47.2%. Defying the upward trend is the reversal in radio/transistor ownership which went down from 35.1% in 2001 to 19.9% in 2011.

Of the 63.2% of households with telephone, 53.2% relates to mobile phone ownership. The data on telephone ownership conforms to the on-going narrative of a mobile revolution taking place in India. It is worth noting that even in rural areas, more than half owns telephone- landline or mobile (54.3%), mobile only (47.9%).

Now, compare mobile/telephone ownership and even TV ownership to stats on having a latrine at home which shows about 46.9% of total households having one and about 49.8% of households still defecating in the open.

This brings us to the oft-quoted confounding reality embedded in this latest census: that more Indians have access to phones than to toilets.

For more: BBC, The Hindu, Telegraph India

2 Comments

Rohan Samarajiva
March 28, 2012, 9:05 pm
“If one wants a legitimate mobile/phone to toilet comparison, what one has to do is work with data from the demand side: census or representative-sample household surveys. I have been looking at the Sri Lanka Household Income and Expenditure Survey for 2009-10. It has data on whether households have mobiles, fixed phones or both, along with data on toilets for exclusive use of the household. Here is analysis.

It is only in the richest province, the Western Province that contributes around half the GDP, that the number of households with phones comes even close to the number of households with toilets for exclusive use. You could say this is Sri Lanka, and therefore the toilet numbers are high. My point is not to quibble about that. The issue is the error of comparing what cannot be compared. What can be compared are toilets in households and phones/mobiles in households. If that is done, India will not look too bad.”

http://lirneasia.net/2011/10/the-fallacy-of-comparing-toilets-in-homes-and-mobile-telephone-penetration/

I did not say India will look good. Just not bad.
Rohan Samarajiva
March 28, 2012, 11:21 pm
The WSJ piles in:
http://blogs.wsj.com/indiarealtime/2012/03/28/economics-journal-what-connects-cellphones-and-toilets/