Recently, I attended a wedding in the village my mom spent her childhood in;visiting after a gap of a couple of years. While it’s not a really small and isolated village per Indian standards, it’s still a village when you compare it to any small town.

One thing I noticed is that technological progress has freed up a lot of time for the traditional farming families. In just one generation, they now have sensors for irrigation, weather prediction reports, better access to seasonal labour and proper price feeds from marketing yards. All this means that compared to their parents, they’re working way less physically but making more financially with less volatility. It’s not utopia by any means, but it is markedly different from the struggles experienced just a few decades ago.

Another thing I observed is that everyone, literally everyone, spent a good fortune on their mobile phones. As a percentage of net worth, I would guess, rural Indians are spending way more on their phone than the urban population. I understand that it’s a good investment for them: it’s a single device that they use for everything: communication, entertainment, business, education, etc. As they’re single device cyborgs, they’re voting with their money to become better cyborgs by owning hardware that gives them the best RoI. This probably makes sense because there’s a performance to price plateau, and they’re willing to splurge to reach it.