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How capital profited from Gujarat earthquake
Title: The Political Biography of an Earthquake: Aftermath and Amnesia in Gujarat, India; Author: Edward Simpson; Publisher: Oxford University Press; Pages: 302; Price: Rs.950.
On the whole, reconstruction works that followed the 2001 earthquake in Gujarat have been presented as a success. British scholar Edward Simpson, an old student of Gujarat, doesn’t agree. True, a great deal of money was spent on building new roads and suburbs, and tax concessions and other state-subsidized incentives led to a booming industrial economy. But all this required heavy borrowing, spawned new inequities, fragmented public services, and led to severe environmental degradation. But Simpson admits that not everyone will agree with this.
A professor of social anthropology in the University of London, Simpson says his book – a scholarly work – “is about the chaotic war of ideas prompted by a disaster” and “an account of how abstract political ideas are made into concrete realities”. It is also about memory, use of history and hope.
Simpson is not saying that ‘good work’ is inherently bad but argues “it is never as neutral or innocent as people often claim and sometimes appear to believe”. The Gujarat earthquake story, he feels, might also be read as an allegory of 10 years of politics in the state.
The January 2001 quake killed around 14,000 people, with Kutch itself accounting for 12,221 deaths. It produced 25-50 tonnes of rubble. Hundreds of villages were flattened in varying degrees while badly built tower blocks collapsed in faraway Ahmedabad. In Anjar town, a few hundred school children taking part in a Republic Day parade were crushed to death. It was devastation at its tragic worst.
Simpson gives full credit to the management of mass death. This was “mostly well ordered. there was no contagion from corpses”. At least one truck even made a long trip to northern India to submerge ashes in the holy Ganges. Private groups and dedicated volunteers did their best.
BJP-ruled Gujarat, Simpson points out, was the first state in India that went for comprehensive economic and structural reforms well before the temblor. The quake was a boon for those who wrote proposals for international funding; it also became tied to the general reforms of the financial sector. “Policy drafted in offices in Manila, Geneva and New York rippled invisibly into provincial Gujarat.”
Equally significantly, Simpson says, the Sangh Parivar and allied groups manipulated the alienation and divisions that followed the quake “for political gain through systematic and planned penetration of the society”. Amid rising communal feelings, some excluded Muslims from new settlements.
There were also widespread allegations of corruption and poor quality construction – even as good work went on. Contractors vanished with advance payments, leaving works incomplete. In the years to come, hundreds were arrested for corruption. All this sparked anger against the state. There were also demands that Kutch should get a union territory status. At one time, Narendra Modi, who became the Gujarat chief minister in 2001 but after the quake, was irritated by calls for Kutch’s political autonomy. Eventually, however, the state overcame all dissent.
This is truly a political biography of a terrible disaster. It is written with a sense of loyalty to the people of Gujarat but with a perspective not everyone, particularly in the state, will be comfortable with.
International online casino Casino Days has published a report sharing their internal data on what types and brands of devices are used to play on the platform by users from the South Asian region.
Such aggregate data analyses allow the operator to optimise their website for the brands and models of devices people are actually using.
The insights gained through the research also help Casino Days tailor their services based on the better understanding of their clients and their needs.
Desktops and Tablets Lose the Battle vs Mobile
The primary data samples analysed by Casino Days reveal that mobile connections dominate the market in South Asia and are responsible for a whopping 96.6% of gaming sessions, while computers and tablets have negligible shares of 2.9% and 0.5% respectively.
The authors of the study point out that historically, playing online casino was exclusively done on computers, and attribute thе major shift to mobile that has unfolded over time to the wide spread of cheaper smartphones and mobile data plans in South Asia.
“Some of the reasons behind this massive difference in device type are affordability, technical advantages, as well as cheaper and more obtainable internet plans for mobiles than those for computers,” the researchers comment.
Xiaomi and Vivo Outperform Samsung, Apple Way Down in Rankings
Chinese brands Xiaomi and Vivo were used by 21.9% and 20.79% of Casino Days players from South Asia respectively, and together with the positioned in third place with a 18.1% share South Korean brand Samsung dominate the market among real money gamers in the region.
Cupertino, California-based Apple is way down in seventh with a user share of just 2.29%, overshadowed by Chinese brands Realme (11.43%), OPPO (11.23%), and OnePlus (4.07%).
Huawei is at the very bottom of the chart with a tiny share just below the single percent mark, trailing behind mobile devices by Motorola, Google, and Infinix.
The data on actual phone usage provided by Casino Days, even though limited to the gaming parts of the population of South Asia, paints a different picture from global statistics on smartphone shipments by vendors.
Apple and Samsung have been sharing the worldwide lead for over a decade, while current regional leader Xiaomi secured their third position globally just a couple of years ago.
Striking Android Dominance among South Asian Real Money Gaming Communities
The shifted market share patterns of the world’s top smartphone brands in South Asia observed by the Casino Days research paper reveal a striking dominance of Android devices at the expense of iOS-powered phones.
On the global level, Android enjoys a comfortable lead with a sizable 68.79% share which grows to nearly 79% when we look at the whole continent of Asia. The data on South Asian real money gaming communities suggests that Android’s dominance grows even higher and is north of the 90% mark.
Among the major factors behind these figures, the authors of the study point to the relative affordability of and greater availability of Android devices in the region, especially when manufactured locally in countries like India and Vietnam.
“And, with influencers and tech reviews putting emphasis on Android devices, the choice of mobile phone brand and OS becomes easy; Android has a much wider range of products and caters to the Asian online casino market in ways that Apple can’t due to technical limitations,” the researchers add.
The far better integration achieved by Google Pay compared to its counterpart Apple Pay has also played a crucial role in shaping the existing smartphone market trends.
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