BENGALURU, Karnataka: Sitting leisurely at a salon in the upscale Koramangala neighbourhood of Bengaluru, hair stylist Ningreingam Shokchui wistfully scrolls through videos of the corn harvest on his family farm in Manipur that his siblings shared with him on WhatsApp.
For 15 years since Ningreingam migrated to India’s Silicon City to look for work, his mobile phone has been his window and connection to his home and life in Ukhrul, Manipur’s highest hill station, that he left behind.
For Ningreingam, much like for millions of permanent and seasonal migrants across India, the mobile phone keeps them connected to their families, farms and festivals. It also offers them leisure on a budget. With India offering amongst the world’s cheapest data plans, many migrants are hooked to video and gaming apps during breaks from work.
But rising recharge costs of prepaid packages in India has cast a shadow on these affordable connections and activities.
“I have to recharge data packs for my entire family—my sisters here and my parents in Manipur. The ₹50-70 increase per pack really adds up and feels very costly,” said Ningreingam, pulling up details of the last recharge he did for his eldest sister using his smartphone.
The 38-year-old had moved to Bengaluru in search of better livelihood opportunities in 2009 and fondly recalls a time when physical top-up cards with scratch-off codes for mobile recharges were still in use.
“The prices have almost doubled in some instances. But we have no other way. Mobile phones are easy and efficient in every possible way, be it for video calling, sending money or googling anything you do not know about in a strange place,” shared Ningreingam.
RISING PRICES
Earlier this year, India’s largest telecom carriers, Reliance Jio and Bharti Airtel, announced tariff hikes in the range of 11-25%, affecting millions of mobile subscribers across India.
Speaking during the 2024 Earnings Conference Call proceedings, Bharti Airtel CEO Gopal Vittal had previously described mobile call rates in India as “absurdly low” compared to global standards. Referring to the move as a necessary “tariff repair”, he suggested that the domestic market was prepared to handle it.
India, the world’s most populous country, is also the world’s fastest growing and the second-largest mobile broadband market. It boasts of a rapidly expanding digital economy, despite discerning discrepancies that persist in terms of rural–urban mobile penetration, the gender divide and geographical disparity in terms of usage.
According to the Mobile Gender Gap Report 2023, Indian women are 40% less likely than men to use mobile internet and are less aware of mobile internet use than women in any of the other 11 nations surveyed.
India has 1.3 billion telecom subscribers, 900 million internet users and 500 million smartphone owners, according to the 2024 State of India’s Digital Economy (SIDE) report by Indian Council for Research on International Economic Relations (ICRIER).
High-quality smartphones are nearly essential for most migrant workers, especially those among the younger demographic, said Rajesh Joseph, a professor at the School of Development at Azim Premji University in Bengaluru, who draws from over 14 years of experience with urban poverty, migration, and unorganized labour.
Joseph’s recent research on migration from Chhattisgarh found that the transient nature of jobs made mobile phones important, almost addictive, for migrant workers to stay connected in major cities with labour networks and contractors who often post labour requirements on WhatsApp groups, commonly seen in the construction industry.
“Some workers even migrate with the goal of purchasing a specific model of a smartphone,” Joseph said.
“Workers are willing to endure considerable price hikes in mobile data packs due to the many benefits it offers in their daily lives, including the ability to document their personal stories and struggles.”
A SMART CHOICE
Migrant workers employed in various metro cities across the country are touted to be the major population dominating the next billion users in India accessing digital mediums through internet-enabled phones.
They play a key role in shaping India’s swiftly evolving digital infrastructure map as they leverage mobile media technologies to send remittances back home and keep themselves connected and entertained.
Moreover, the combination of cameras with mobile phones has resulted in an increase in visual communication, allowing migrant workers to leverage this technology to present more emotive, expressive content through various multimedia tools that were previously inaccessible to them.
This form of documentation – by creating lyrical, entertaining reels and videos – is often done through short video apps like Instagram, ShareChat and MOJ, according to researchers who work on migrant concerns.
Assa Doron and Robin Jeffrey in their 2013 book, The Great Indian Phone Book: How the Cheap Cell Phone Changes Business, Politics, and Daily Life, argue that the mobile phone was a well-suited disruptive tool for democratic India for “it gave groups with limited resources but strong convictions the capacity to connect, mobilize and broadcast”.
The device brings together multiple, previously divergent media functions such audio and video content, global positioning system (GPS), mobile banking and other internet facilities.
Several in-built features such as calculator, calendar and alarm also make it the most preferred digital device among migrant workers.
“When I buy an expensive phone, I consider it an investment in a high-quality camera. I watch most of my series and Chinese movies on my phone. Moreover, there are video games and Instagram, which use up most of my daily data,” says Ningreingam, explaining how he uses his phone beyond just calling and texting.
AFFORDABLE LEISURE
The affordability of mobile phones is crucial for migrants to sustain their jobs and life in a big city, analysts and workers said. It is crucial for both navigating city life and staying in touch with their family back home.
Originally from Lanka district in Assam, Kavita (30), who gave only her first name, has been a Bengaluru resident for 12 years now. She works at a salon, where shift hours are normally from 11 AM to 7 PM.
Her mother-in-law unfailingly video calls her every day and in the absence of a television set at home, the mobile phone is Kavita’s best bet to catch up on the latest episodes of Savdhaan India, her favourite television show.
“Instagram, WhatsApp, Facebook and YouTube are my most used apps. I also share the phone with my 4-year-old daughter who often watches cartoons,” shares Kavita.
When asked about the time of the day when she uses these apps, Kavita responds with a gurgling laugh, “I use them between work, after work, after dinner—whenever I have free time. It’s mostly for timepass”.
But now this once affordable leisure activity is expensive with her Jio monthly pack with a 1.5 GB daily data allowance costing ₹ 299, up from ₹239 earlier, the 25% hike a strain on Kavita’s earnings.
“It doesn’t even last a full month. The add-on data pack prices have also increased making it difficult to recharge for shorter units of data,” complained Kavita.
In her book, The Next Billion Users – Digital Life Beyond the West, author Payal Arora (2019) asserts that “leisure continues to be a central motivating force behind low-income communities’ adoption and use of digital media
Smartphones, analysts say, represent a ‘culture of convenience’ and have transformed how many navigate informal work, enjoy leisure, and maintain relationships beyond traditional social hierarchies.
For salon job aspirant Punam Biswakarma, who recently relocated from Siliguri district in West Bengal to Bengaluru, her phone is a tool to stay connected to her parents and sick grandmother back home.
“With most of my siblings away, I feel the need to call and talk to my parents and family back home every day,” Punam said, whose siblings also work either in the beauty care industry or the hospitality sector.
She said she was addicted to Instagram reels, that consumes most of her data, but she also never misses making video calls back home at least three times a week, an important connection for her as she feels anxious otherwise.
But it has been two days since she exhausted her data pack and now hesitates to recharge given her current state of unemployment.
“I recently switched my connection from Airtel to Jio for the cheaper data packs and a great onboarding offer of free data for a month. But now, prices have increased across all companies,” she said.
STRAINED BUDGETS AND TEDIOUS CALCULATIONS
The current data booster prices for Reliance Jio for every 1 GB, 2 GB and 6 GB data are currently priced at 19, 29 and 69 rupees respectively.
Reliance Jio’s three-month plan, priced at 999 rupees, offers a daily data allowance of 2 GB and is valid for up to 98 days. The yearly plan hairstylist Ningreingam selected for his sisters’ costs 3,599 rupees and provides a daily data allowance of 2.5 GB. Prior to recent tariff hikes, data plans which offered similar services were priced under 900 and 3,000 rupees, respectively.
Alongside these price increases, Jio also discontinued two of its popular prepaid plans: the 395 rupees option, which offered 84 days of service, and the 1,559 rupees plan, which provided 336 days of validity.
Given the increased tariffs, Ningreingam admits that it is rather a difficult process to evaluate the economic viability of different data plans and bulk recharge packages. “I find it bothersome to recharge every 28 days, so I opted for a 3-month pack recently. And to save money, I opted for the yearly plans for my sisters,” he said.
Ningreingam finds himself opting for an extra 50 GB every month in addition to his current package. “Streaming videos online consumes a lot of data,” he explains. “I often watch videos that provide short tutorials on the latest and most fashionable hairdressing trends,” he said.
Many migrant workers employed in the beauty care sector do not have a fixed monthly income. Their earnings often depend on the number of customers they serve, commissions, and the profits generated by the salon.
The recent tariff hikes are straining the limited budget of workers like Ningreingam, who feels resigned to the situation despite the financial burden.
“My smartphone is part of everything I do and plan in a day. I feel restless without it,” he said.
Amoolya Rajappa is a Bengaluru-based independent journalist and reports on labour, internal migration, climate change and displacement in India.
