The “One Laptop Per Child” (OLPC) project, which aims to provide a INR 15,000 laptop to every child in the country, is hoping for a sale of 10 lakh units by the end of the year. The OLPC project started by Nicholas Negroponte offers a relatively cheap laptop which has 1 GB RAM and a 4GB flash memory. After many countries like Uruguay, Argentina, Brazil, Pakistan, Thailand, Nigeria and Libya showed interest in this project, OLPC came to India and it saw immediate response from some states like Manipur, Kerala, and Gujarat, with Gujarat and Kerala placing orders for 3.5 lakh and 1.5 lakh units respectively.
The laptops are given to students, similar to school uniforms and ultimately remain the property of the child. This is a great initiative and hopefully all states will start participating thus helping all children in India to possess a laptop. But one question that comes to mind is why not the $35 laptop?
The HRD Ministry had unveiled the $35 laptop last month, which is to going to be available by 2011. With the OLPC laptops going at INR 15, 000/unit to the state governments, the $35 laptops are way cheaper and can save the governments loads of money. The problem with the announcement made by the HRD ministry in July is that some governments might wait for this cheaper laptop to come into the market to place bulk orders for the same. This, though might sound like a smart idea, it only pushes back the date for when each child will be able to use a laptop for his / her education.
Solution to the problem
Honestly speaking, there is no solution in this scenario. It doesn’t look like the HRD Ministry will be able to expedite the production of the $35 laptop, and as a result many state governments might end up waiting for next year. If it can, then not only does the HRD Ministry’s decision of rejecting the $100 laptop hold good, but many children also stand to benefit sooner than later.
As of now, looking from India’s perspective, we all hope that OLPC achieves their target of 10 lakh unit sales. What do you think?
Indian HRD should just join forces with OLPC and work towards ARM Powered Laptops and Tablets below $100 a piece. OLPC will have ARM Powered laptops and tablets also ready by next year, tablet targetted to $75 each. But those prices include Pixel Qi screen which are absolutely required otherwise your device only has 4 hours battery runtime instead of 40 hours. And without that screen, the tablet or laptop cannot be used as an ereader, defeating a large part of the point. Also, it is preferable to use the fastest availabl ARM processor, otherwise tasks like web browsing might be too slow to really work.
I absolutely agree with Charbax. MHRD are just making the students wait for progress to enter their lives. So much value do they place for Indian students and their lives.