If you live in India, your most ubiquitous tool will be your mobile phone. Everyone from your vegetable vendor to your local heavy breather will have one, and will use it to relentlessly communicate with you. “SMS bhej do, missed call de doh” (send me a text or give me a missed call) has become part of modern Indian lingo. Indeed, India is one of the world’s fastest growing markets for mobile phones.

But as Shashi Tharoor pointed out in his book, The Elephant, the Tiger and the Cell Phone, it wasn’t always this way. Back when I was a child in 1980s India, even a regular phone was a luxury. It took months of pleading and bribing to get a weak, intermittent connection. Calls were carefully rationed, using them only to exchange essential information. There was only one phone company – the government one.

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