Rasooli Bibi could be anywhere between 70 and 80-years-old; she cannot recall her age. “You can guess by counting the wrinkles on my face,” she says. As she steps out of a government distribution camp with a newly issued smartphone box in her hand, a neighbour teasingly asks what she plans to do with the device, given her failing eyesight. “You keep quiet,” she says, flashing a toothless smile and strutting out, her clouded eyes sparkling with joy.
Ms. Bibi is among the seven lakh women (as on August 24) who have recieved smartphones in election-bound Rajasthan under the Indira Gandhi Smartphone scheme, which was launched by Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot on August 10. In the scheme’s first phase, the State’s Congress government plans to distribute 40 lakh smartphones to three categories of beneficiaries: those who receive pensions for widows, girl students, and women heads of families who have completed 100 days of work under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) scheme.
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