This is The Guardian.

Welcome to The Guardian long read, showcasing the best long-form journalism covering culture, politics and new thinking.

For the text version of this and all our long reads, go to the Guardian.com forward slash long read.

Scamming became the new farming. Inside India's cybercrime villages by Snigvha Bunam read by Mikhail Sen. Some names and identifying details have been changed.

On the surface, the town of Jamtara appeared no different from neighbouring districts.

But if you knew where to look, there were startling differences. In the middle of

Spartan villages were houses of imposing size and unusual opulence. Millions of Indians knew why this was.

They knew, to their cost, where Jamthara was.

To them, it was no longer a place.

It was a verb.

You lived in fear of being Jamtarad.

Over the past 15 years, parts of this sleepy district in the eastern state of Jharkhand had grown fabulously wealthy. This extraordinary feat of rural development was powered by young men who, armed

with little more than mobile phones, had mastered the art of siphoning money from strangers' bank accounts.

The sums they pilfered were so staggering that at times their schemes resembled bank

heists more than mere acts of financial fraud.

In a short period, scam calls became an almost universal experience in India. With every innovation in India's digital marketplace,

smartphones, digital wallets, e-commerce, crypto,

Jamthara's scams expanded their target area.

In New Delhi, India's policymakers boasted about

digital India and the spread of modern telecom infrastructure. But for the majority

of Indian citizens, the digital revolution became synonymous with Jamthara scams. Netflix even made a

TV series about the district with the tagline, Sabka number aega. You could read that as everyone will get a call or as your number will be up jamthara scammers

...