When Union minister for human resources Kapil Sibal announced last year thatIndia was all set to launch a $35 tablet, it drew admiration, awe and wonder. It made headlines in mainstream media across the world. While some hailed, there were those also who derided what they called an almost impossible feat. Almost a year later, the ambitious product is yet to see the light of the day. There were many who perhaps secretly wished it would never happen.
Until Sibal made the announcement in the summer of 2010, One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) from Massachusetts Institute of Technology ( MIT) Labs and Classmate PC from Intel were positioned as the cheapest laptops targeted at school-going children and would have been directly impacted by any such product in the market.
The Linux-based tablet, codenamed Sakshat, wasexpected to be launched last month , but we are yet to see that happen.
On the anniversary of the minister's announcement, we bring to you a letter from the head of OLPC India Satish Jha on India's announcement to launch the $35 tablet and his take on why it has not happened so far.
It may be noted that the views expressed here are his own and do not represent Times of India's editorial take on the issue. Nor does it endorse in any way that the OLPC laptop priced at $100 plus is necessarily better suited for India's under-privileged children than the yet-to-be-lunched 'Sakshat'.
While we are still awaiting the $35 tablet to become a reality, readers are welcome to share with us their own views and discuss the issue further.
One year, no murmur?
-- Satish Jha
A year ago tomorrow India's minister for "human resource development" (people are resources that need to be developed being the moral) pronounced that India was going to deliver 100,000 laptops that will cost $35 only within a couple of months. He displayed it- NOT as a laptop as we know- but as a 7 inch screen "tablet". Picked up from the Taiwanese market, it was going to be a standard for COLLEGE students in CITIES. Not for elementary schools in rural India.
However, his announcement, confusion between the minister showing a tablet and calling it a laptop, meant for urban, college going but posited against One Laptop per Child and thus creating an impression that it was also for the rural poor and the elementary school learners, insisting it was ready to go when there were no specifications frozen just yet.. Well ministers have their privileges. Being a lawyer by training and rather successful one at that meant that no one will cross examine him. It was his privilege to make statements and it was people's obligation to believe him. Media played the usual happy camper, swallowing the most untenable pronouncements hook, line and sinker.
A year from that fateful day, India still does not have the famous, let us call it a "Laplet". Sibal's laplet has been much announced and its arrival much awaited. The minister does not have anything to show for it just yet. But who will question his veracity?
A minister being mislead is nothing unusual. The minister is not supposed to be an expert and goes by the advice of his "expert" teams. Therein lies the rub. Just the other day I met a former education secretary who now chairs the board of governors of an IIT. he was convinced that the minister's advisers were up to something big. I advised him that those folks who were presumably up to something big had come to me to ask for a "recipe" to create a $35 lappet. All I could do was play my brahminical role and guide them towards Lord Tirpupati. Alas, even the Lord had let them down the first time around they went to announce their $10 laptop on 31st Jan 2009.
This time again, barring people's short memory, little has come to the rescue of the honorable minister or, more appropriately, his advisers.
Strangely enough, I had advised the minister just a few days before he made the announcement that it will be a folly to do so. For India had no track record of product creation and unless they actually had one well tested, there was no point claiming they could do it. Just like, I suggested, he would not appoint a man from the street as his finance director overnight, there was no point in embracing a claim from someone without a track record.
IITs, he said. I suggested that IITs are a great teaching institution and from there the product creation process was generations away. IISC, he said. They are a research institution that supports our researchers when they cannot find much to do overseas and still far way from creating a product of any sort. He wished me well, patted my back in a patronizing way and wished me luck that sounded like "go to hell".
A year later, will India hold him accountable? How will it justify that the minister was wrongly advised to make a wrong statement to the people of India and the world? That statement delayed the adoption of something readily available to transform our children's future.
Ask the children in Uttaranchal led by Dr Veena Sethi or at Khairat near Karjat in Mumbai led by Sandeep Surve or the scheduled caste children at Keekerwali in Shriganganagar, Rajasthan. Ask the former Chief Secretary of Delhi Mr Regunathan. Ask the directors and Joint Secretaries in the Department of IT under minister Sibal's ministry. Ask several principal secretaries of education who have seen its potential. Ask a few thousand people that I personally met. Ask the presidents of 45 countries that adopted it. And ask the right question: did OLPC change the life of children who learnt with it beyond what they had imagined? And you may be not so surprised to hear a positive, approving, loud yes!
But for those who have taken upon themselves to affect India's educational and technological destiny in their hands, all that matters little.
The worst enemy of OLPC is that it is a not for profit. If there is no profit, who will develop stakes in it?
The second worst is that it was not invented by someone who had the power to claim it to be his own creation. It is already better known than them and they cannot embrace something they cannot call their own, not if there is no profit to be made anyway.
Thirdly, the process of governance ensures that without a champion for the poor, every book will be thrown at anyone who embraces it. Ask the former education minister of Kerala, the chief minister of Himachal, the principal education secretary of Orissa and many other states.. A director at ministry of HRD will tell her own former boss what is right for the nation. And speak to her and you would wonder which world do they come from. Do they understand India? Its poor? its educational needs? Its aspirations? Its potential? And how they are standing in the way of India's future?
Any idea with three powerful barriers has little room to flourish. Meanwhile, India has lost its shine a bit in the world that has learnt to take its minister's pronouncements with a pin of salt. Who cares what happens to those who have no voice of their own and whose guardians are equally voiceless, unlettered and unheard?
Will the media wake up? Will it ask the right questions? Will the educated who have a voice will wake up to it? Will the prime minister wake up? Or will there be a leader who really understands the meaning of future denied to 22 million children year after year?
Until Sibal made the announcement in the summer of 2010, One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) from Massachusetts Institute of Technology ( MIT) Labs and Classmate PC from Intel were positioned as the cheapest laptops targeted at school-going children and would have been directly impacted by any such product in the market.
The Linux-based tablet, codenamed Sakshat, wasexpected to be launched last month , but we are yet to see that happen.
On the anniversary of the minister's announcement, we bring to you a letter from the head of OLPC India Satish Jha on India's announcement to launch the $35 tablet and his take on why it has not happened so far.
It may be noted that the views expressed here are his own and do not represent Times of India's editorial take on the issue. Nor does it endorse in any way that the OLPC laptop priced at $100 plus is necessarily better suited for India's under-privileged children than the yet-to-be-lunched 'Sakshat'.
While we are still awaiting the $35 tablet to become a reality, readers are welcome to share with us their own views and discuss the issue further.
One year, no murmur?
-- Satish Jha
A year ago tomorrow India's minister for "human resource development" (people are resources that need to be developed being the moral) pronounced that India was going to deliver 100,000 laptops that will cost $35 only within a couple of months. He displayed it- NOT as a laptop as we know- but as a 7 inch screen "tablet". Picked up from the Taiwanese market, it was going to be a standard for COLLEGE students in CITIES. Not for elementary schools in rural India.
However, his announcement, confusion between the minister showing a tablet and calling it a laptop, meant for urban, college going but posited against One Laptop per Child and thus creating an impression that it was also for the rural poor and the elementary school learners, insisting it was ready to go when there were no specifications frozen just yet.. Well ministers have their privileges. Being a lawyer by training and rather successful one at that meant that no one will cross examine him. It was his privilege to make statements and it was people's obligation to believe him. Media played the usual happy camper, swallowing the most untenable pronouncements hook, line and sinker.
A year from that fateful day, India still does not have the famous, let us call it a "Laplet". Sibal's laplet has been much announced and its arrival much awaited. The minister does not have anything to show for it just yet. But who will question his veracity?
A minister being mislead is nothing unusual. The minister is not supposed to be an expert and goes by the advice of his "expert" teams. Therein lies the rub. Just the other day I met a former education secretary who now chairs the board of governors of an IIT. he was convinced that the minister's advisers were up to something big. I advised him that those folks who were presumably up to something big had come to me to ask for a "recipe" to create a $35 lappet. All I could do was play my brahminical role and guide them towards Lord Tirpupati. Alas, even the Lord had let them down the first time around they went to announce their $10 laptop on 31st Jan 2009.
This time again, barring people's short memory, little has come to the rescue of the honorable minister or, more appropriately, his advisers.
Strangely enough, I had advised the minister just a few days before he made the announcement that it will be a folly to do so. For India had no track record of product creation and unless they actually had one well tested, there was no point claiming they could do it. Just like, I suggested, he would not appoint a man from the street as his finance director overnight, there was no point in embracing a claim from someone without a track record.
IITs, he said. I suggested that IITs are a great teaching institution and from there the product creation process was generations away. IISC, he said. They are a research institution that supports our researchers when they cannot find much to do overseas and still far way from creating a product of any sort. He wished me well, patted my back in a patronizing way and wished me luck that sounded like "go to hell".
A year later, will India hold him accountable? How will it justify that the minister was wrongly advised to make a wrong statement to the people of India and the world? That statement delayed the adoption of something readily available to transform our children's future.
Ask the children in Uttaranchal led by Dr Veena Sethi or at Khairat near Karjat in Mumbai led by Sandeep Surve or the scheduled caste children at Keekerwali in Shriganganagar, Rajasthan. Ask the former Chief Secretary of Delhi Mr Regunathan. Ask the directors and Joint Secretaries in the Department of IT under minister Sibal's ministry. Ask several principal secretaries of education who have seen its potential. Ask a few thousand people that I personally met. Ask the presidents of 45 countries that adopted it. And ask the right question: did OLPC change the life of children who learnt with it beyond what they had imagined? And you may be not so surprised to hear a positive, approving, loud yes!
But for those who have taken upon themselves to affect India's educational and technological destiny in their hands, all that matters little.
The worst enemy of OLPC is that it is a not for profit. If there is no profit, who will develop stakes in it?
The second worst is that it was not invented by someone who had the power to claim it to be his own creation. It is already better known than them and they cannot embrace something they cannot call their own, not if there is no profit to be made anyway.
Thirdly, the process of governance ensures that without a champion for the poor, every book will be thrown at anyone who embraces it. Ask the former education minister of Kerala, the chief minister of Himachal, the principal education secretary of Orissa and many other states.. A director at ministry of HRD will tell her own former boss what is right for the nation. And speak to her and you would wonder which world do they come from. Do they understand India? Its poor? its educational needs? Its aspirations? Its potential? And how they are standing in the way of India's future?
Any idea with three powerful barriers has little room to flourish. Meanwhile, India has lost its shine a bit in the world that has learnt to take its minister's pronouncements with a pin of salt. Who cares what happens to those who have no voice of their own and whose guardians are equally voiceless, unlettered and unheard?
Will the media wake up? Will it ask the right questions? Will the educated who have a voice will wake up to it? Will the prime minister wake up? Or will there be a leader who really understands the meaning of future denied to 22 million children year after year?
Mr Sibal was lying through his teeth. Congress President Sonia Gandhi and General Secretary Rahul Gandhi should not that some of their ministers may do anything to put their face in front of TV and pictures in print. But to what extent can a cabinet member mislead? Not just the nation but the world? Its shameful to say the least.
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