Sometime
back I wrote an article, 'The
big joke.'
about the low cost tablet computer 'Aakash,' that was supposed to
have been produced in India and distributed to students at very low
cost by Government of India. The contractor chosen by the Government
for this project was a Canadian company ' Datawind,' owned by a
person of Indian origin.
The
first model of this computer produced by this company was a complete
disaster, as a result of which Mumbai's Indian Institute of
Technology was roped in to firm up the specifications and monitor the
manufacture. IIT did its job well and removed most of the
deficiencies in the first version to come out with design of second
version called as 'Aakash II.'
Sometime
in November 2012, Datawind supplied first lot of about 10000 tablets
to the Government. At the same time 'New York Times' carried out an
investigation
about Datawind operations and conclusively found out that this entire
lot of 10000 tablets was manufactured by Chinese manufacturers, who
had supplied the tablets to Datawind. In fact, Datawind had not made
even an effort to set up any manufacturing facilities in India till
then. It was obvious that it was going to fail in its commitment to
supply 100000 tablets by December 2012.
Datawind
asked for an extended deadline up to 31st
March 2013 to complete the supply of 100000 tablets to the
Government, which, now in a bind, reluctantly agreed. Human
resources ministry also wrote to IIT Mumbai, expressing its concern
over the delay and asking them to ensure the vendor (Datawind) meets
the terms and conditions and completes the supply by March 31 in
letter and spirit, failing which, action could be initiated against
it.
The
ministry officials now admit that till second week of March,
Datawind has managed to supply only 20000 tablets against total order
of 100000 pieces and it is clear that they are going to miss this
deadline as well. Judging from the past experience, it requires
minimum intelligence to predict that the supplies now made between
December and March also must have been manufactured in China.
HRD
ministry, in fact, had big plans for this 'Aakash II' tablet. First
100000 pieces of were to be made available to students at a
subsidised rate of Rs 1,130. After this, it was proposed to make 5.5
Million tablets available. Luckily no tendering process has been yet
started by the Government. Since the first 100000 pieces themselves
have not been made, it is clear that the project is going to end as a
big fiasco as expected.
Time
of India has reported the minister in charge of HRD saying; "The
product is there, but we have not been able to productionise it as
per the requirement. Otherwise students would have got it by now,"
About the future, minister only said: "one should not be
obsessed with the hardware. Even if the supply of Aaakash is not
there as per the requirement, there is enough device is the market
catering to the low cost tablet segment." No doubt, there is a
great loss of face here for the Government. HRD ministry officials
now have come out with a strange statement that because of the Aakash
project, an environment has been created for similar other devices in
the market, which a students as well can go for instead of being too
"obsessed" with the device. The ministry may now focus on
improving the connectivity among educational campuses.
All
this only means that the big joke is finally getting over!
24th
March 2013
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