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At farm s length

At farm s length "Talk more, pay less,' suggests a billboard. A cellphone company is associating lower talktime rates with the amount of mangoes you buy. If you are a reporter trying to find why hundreds of indebted farmers have killed themselves in Andhra Pradesh (ap), the irony, in several square metres of neon-illuminated advertising space, is too unsubtle to miss. Hyderabad, with some of the largest billboards in India, is an instruction in advertising (read propaganda). Here's an anti-hiv/aids message: "Condom. Anti-virus softwear.'

Called Cyberabad, Hyderabad is a city with a virtual reality of its own. But the local area network of this computer city is littered with viruses and Trojans

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