India Developing $10 Laptop?

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India Developing $10 Laptop?

The IDG news service reports that the Indian Institute of Science and the Indian Institute of Technology are developing a $10 laptop.

Although no specifications or other details have been released, the IDG News Service is reporting that the Indian Institute of Science and the Indian Institute of Technology are working in conjunction with the Indian government to develop a $10 laptop computer aimed for use in higher education. The announcement came at a conference in New Dehli, where the Minister of State for Higher Education D. Purandeswari noted the laptop would help increase the quality of higher education in India.

The Indian government has also announced plans to improve distance learning programs my making free bandwidth available for educational purposes to every Indian, along with developing a very low-cost (and low-power) network access device. The minister also didn't reveal whether the proposed laptop's price tag would be supported by government subsidies.

As a nation, India has one of the world's largest populations—currently estimated to be over 1.3 billion people. However, currently fewer than 5 million have access to broadband in their homes.

The Indian government did not sign on to the One Laptop Per Child program (famously branding the program as "pedagogically suspect"), although Indian telecom provider Reliance Communications has been conducting pilot programs with the OLPC XO since late 2007.

Courtesy : Digital Trends

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India Developing $10 Laptop

After displaying its prowess in developing the world's cheapest car, India is on track to rolling out the world's cheapest laptop computer that could cost as low as $10, a top official said in New Delhi Tuesday.

Minister of State for Human Resource Development D. Purandeswari said research was being conducted to develop the laptop, especially for use by students, which will cost all of $10.

"Research in this direction is being already carried out at the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore and the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Madras," she told the e-India annual summit on information and communication technologies.

The laptop, when produced, will prove to be a breakthrough device that could solve the problems of low computer literacy and e-learning not only in India, but also the world over, she added.

Earlier this year, India's Tata Group had unveiled the "Nano" that was touted as the world's cheapest car costing all of $2,500 and the announcement had grabbed global headlines.

The cheapest laptop available today is at least 10 times costlier. The "XO" sold by the Massachusetts-based non-government organization 'One Laptop Per Child Foundation' sells for $188.

The foundation, started by Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) alumnus Nicholas Negroponte, aims to supply the low cost machines to the governments of developing countries for them to source it to school children.

But the Indian government rejected the offer in 2006, calling it an experimental model.

"India must not allow itself to be used for experimentation with children in this area," the human resource ministry had stated then.

However the project was taken up by the Anil Dhirubhai Ambani Group to be implemented as a pilot in Maharashtra's Khairat village.

Under this initiative, Reliance Communications will provide net connectivity, backbone, logistics, and support to the OLPC initiative. "The initiative aims at covering over 25,000 towns, and 6,00,000 villages in the country by 2008."

Courtesy : Tech2

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Now, ADAG partners Negroponte in OLPC program

4 Aug, 2008, 2150 hrs IST, BusinessWeek

Nicholas Negroponte has found it tough going in India. For years as the head of MIT's Media Lab, the famed computer scientist promoted radical ways to use technology to transform society. His best-known idea is the One Laptop per Child (OLPC) program, a plan to make a simple, $100 laptop that would create a digitally literate generation in the hardscrabble classrooms of emerging-market nations. The laptop, now dubbed the XO, is finally being mass-produced in China.

In 2001, the computer scientist came to India to promote the Media Lab, but failed to impress New Delhi. Negroponte clearly fell off the India map, when then-Information Technology Minister Arun Shourie dismissed his efforts as "pedagogically suspect" and wanted more accountability. When Negroponte's nonprofit One Laptop per Child foundation approached the Indian government in 2006, his project was again rebuffed by India's then-Education Secretary, Sudeep Banerjee.

Two years later, Negroponte is back to open a new office in New Delhi and launch the OLPC program in India on Aug. 4. Despite all the rebuffs, Negroponte's urge to sell in India is stronger than ever. "India is the largest market for us, and I had to be here," he says. More important, Negroponte has a new partner—one of India's politically influential private-sector conglomerates. The Digital Bridge Foundation, part of Reliance ADA Group, owned by Indian billionaire Anil Ambani, is providing the technology backbone and logistics for the installation of OLPC's white and green XO laptops in primary schools.

Seeking inroads into India

This new partnership is a complete change from OLPC's global moves, which generally involve exclusive deals with governments in various countries as the best way to reach students. Today, Negroponte and his band of evangelists are ready to try anything to sell their laptops quickly: "Scale," says Negroponte, "is key to OLPC." So unlike other countries like Peru and Uruguay, for instance, where the XO laptops are completely funded by the federal state, the Indian blend will include corporations, industry bodies, and state governments. Recruiting Reliance and other allies may overcome New Delhi's lingering reluctance toward technology spending in primary education. "Our primary school children need reading and writing habits, not expensive laptops," says Arun Kumar Rath, India's Education Secretary.

For Negroponte, the Reliance partnership is an opportunity to make inroads into the huge Indian market: There are 370 million children studying in 1.2 million schools in India. Of these, primary schools pack in 150 million students, compared to 220 million in high school. For Reliance, India's second-largest telecom player, those big numbers provide a great commercial opportunity to expand its base of customers to the bottom of the pyramid. In the last few years, Reliance has been aggressively laying underground cables to increase bandwidth connectivity. "Reliance is in this whole networked economy. The OLPC initiative will help us bring in more users," says Sumit Chowdhury, chief information officer at Reliance. The company will sell bandwidth as the laptops will be connected to servers powered by Reliance. So far, the Reliance strategy has been to sell the XOs to nongovernment organizations (NGOs), which then donate them to schools.

An OLPC prototype project in India is already up and running at Khairat village, 26 miles south of Mumbai. Operating from a 10-by-12-foot room, the state-run school has 28 boys and girls from first to fourth grade squatting on thin, long mats on the floor.

The self-motivated Sandeep Surve, 29, is the lone school teacher, who effortlessly goes from teaching spelling to the first-graders to explaining the solar system to the fourth-graders on their English-language XOs. Since Aug. 1, the laptops have also been operating with an interface for the local language, Marathi. "Now the children will be able to move ahead even faster. The XO will replace their notebooks completely," says Surve. For the students, who had never heard of a laptop until a year ago, the XO is more than a toy. Fourth-grader Geeta Akade proudly displays her work on the XO. In another corner, a group of young students are practicing their English alphabets, while 6-year-old Rahul is busy chatting online with his teacher. "I never let anyone touch my laptop," he chirps.

Skeptics point to more pressing issues

This is only the beginning for OLPC in India, which has given its Indian partners a total of 500 XOs for distribution. Chowdhury says that many Indian state governments and NGOs have shown interest, but they have yet to approve budgets for the XO, which is more expensive than originally advertised. The XO, when conceived, was supposed to cost $100. Partly because the laptop is still made in fairly limited quantities, the cost of the XO in India is around $200. Negroponte expects that with increasing volumes, the XOs will actually sell for $100 in three years. "It becomes viable only if you build an ecosystem around the laptop. You have to train teachers and build a curriculum around the XO," says Nitish Rane, of the Swabhimaan NGO that runs schools in rural Maharashtra state. Rane has already deployed 100 XOs and plans to buy 500 more by yearend.

Not everyone is as gung-ho as Rane. There are many who believe that there are other big issues confronting Indian education that need to be addressed first. India's spends 3% of its gross domestic product on education, compared with 4% in China. There's a paucity of teachers in India, many schools lack basic facilities like toilets, power outages are frequent, and many subjects are not taught because there are no instructors. "Technology has a limited role to play when you are short of funds," says Atanu Dey, chief economist at tech innovation company Netcore Solutions. Negroponte is not deterred. He claims that despite the problems, the XO has an important place in the hierarchy of India's education needs. "The laptops can fast-track traditional methods," he says.

It is still early to say how the OLPC effort will pan out in India. With five state elections around the corner, some politicians may be reluctant to back this unusual project. Satish Jha, the head of OLPC India, says that he will tap corporations with a social conscience and industry bodies like the Confederation of Indian Industry to fund and promote the XOs. There's a tieup with Amazon.com to display the XO on its front page.

The demand for the XOs is also coming from unusual quarters in different sectors. These include insurance agents, census representatives, and even rural outsourcing units eager to deploy the sturdy, easy-to-use laptops. No deal, says Negroponte: He is committed to providing the laptop only for education.