Introduction

Abstract

Bhubaneshwar, capital of the state of Orissa, lies near India’s eastern coast on the Bay of Bengal. The center of an ancient kingdom, Bhubaneshwar is said to have once held nearly 7000 temples. Today the jungle has swallowed many of these temples and the ancient kingdom is part of what Indian tourist brochures like to call the country’s ‘hoary past’. Bhubaneshwar is now a marginal city. The state is poor, the government inefficient, the climate deadly.1 In a country with more than a third of its 1 billion people living under the poverty line, and a literacy rate of 64 percent, Orissa is considered one of India’s least developed regions. In Bhubaneshwar there are not many tourists and there are no McDonalds or Kentucky Fried Chickens. Here, a cold Coca-Cola tastes deliciously exotic. Yet, even in this city, on the periphery of both India and the world, cyberspace is spreading.KeywordsMobile PhoneCell PhoneTelephone ServiceManicure LawnKentucky Fried ChickenThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.