India's Growing Obsession with Porn Culture

Also, the arrival of smartphones is changing the country's porn landscape further. India has the lowest access of smartphones, 10 percent, among the youth globally. With email, social networking, chatting, messaging and gaming, it is a device much craved for by the youth. And now there are porn applications as well. It is like a 'pocket' girlfriend or boyfriend, who can strip, talk dirty, and make sexual noises. "These are some of the 'apps' that can be downloaded on smartphones," Pranesh Prakash, programme manager with Bangalore-based think-tank Centre for Internet and Society was qouted as saying to India Today. He added "App download data shows the popularity of sex-themed apps on smartphones, apart from the adults-only stores." As for the age restrictions for applications, mostly there is just a pop-up asking if one is over 17. Smartphones are the future of anytime-anywhere porn, as estimated by TRAI, as over 50 percent of all Internet users in the country access the web via mobile phones today.

The threshold of what can be called 'pornography' is changing. Mainstream and hardcore entertainment is coming closer. It's also hard to draw the line between porn and art in vulgar item numbers, from Sheila ki Jawani to Munni Badnam Hui.

Pornography lately is growing big in India. But, the U.S., particularly the Los Angeles area, has the biggest porn industry in the world, followed by London and Budapest, estimated between $4 billion (20, 000 crore) and $15 billion (75, 000 crore) annually. Top porn stars without doubt earn a quarter of a million dollars annually.