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Last Words
Text appeal
By Sydney Morning Herald
11/11/2002
New Delhi: A human rights group has launched a campaign against Short Message Services, arguing SMS has become a root of divorces in India where mobile telephones are the latest craze.
Activists with the National Human Rights Council staged a demonstration and burned a cellular telephone in a unique protest against the pithy messages which are now crowding the Indian ether.
"SMS is against Indian etiquettes and culture and is the cause of numerous divorces in the recent past," council president Subhash Gupta said after the noisy protest in the heart of the Indian capital.
The protest, the first of its kind in India where some 2.5 million people are now owners of mobile telephones, argued that even innocent text messages like the typical "U4ME" were known to have sparked marital discord ending in divorce.
"SMS has diverted the youth of the country from Indian culture and they are now following the western trend of dating," added Council General Secretary Ramesh Sabbarwal.
Flashing SMS greetings broke all records on the festival of lights last Monday when cellular operators clocked a staggering nine million short messages in New Delhi alone.
Across India, 25 million messages went out on that single day - representing a 500 per cent jump over normal usage - which so overloaded the infrastructure that words of endearment took six hours to travel between two lonely hearts.
Outgoing SMS are currently metered but a rate war raging between cellular service providers is likely to soon enable Indian users to punch out a quick one-liner on the house.
Original article appeared at Sydney Morning Herald
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