India plans $10 or Rs 500 laptop computers for everybody: Sakshat is it for real?

Top scientists from its Institutes of Technology in Bangalore and Madras had developed the machines which will run on low power, with low memory but be able to connect wirelessly to the internet.

- Prototype of the new laptop will be unveiled in Tirupati this week and has been produced for £14.

- The machine can be charged with a 2 watt power input, has a 2 GB memory.

Given that the IT industry is the poster child of India’s growth story, the disjunction between its growing profile and the model of higher education in the country as it exists now is a cause for concern. India’s demographics are in its favour; the youth bulge guarantees a steady supply of manpower that, ideally, should drive the industry’s expansion. The problem is that graduates produced by thousands of institutes around the country have little to no computer literacy or experience with modern networking technology. At a time when education is increasingly being seen as a prime economic driver, a vast resource is being wasted instead of being leveraged. The national education programme could rectify this.

The benefits will be twofold. The programme could not just improve the quality and broaden the skill-set of graduates but bring in those who slip through the cracks. Currently, India’s gross enrolment ratio for higher education is 11 per cent, inadequate at best and abysmal when seen in the context of countries such as the US and Canada with 60 per cent. A more balanced comparison with other BRIC nations is not particularly flattering either; their ratios hover around the 21 per cent mark. With the goal of providing not just the laptop but internet connectivity as well to over 18,000 colleges, outreach through e-learning and distance education, a key component of the programme, is one way to make inroads into the problem.

The computing device has been developed by Vellore Institute of Technology students and scientists at the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore and Indian Institute of Technology, Madras. The laptop will be named as ‘Sakshat’ and will bringing in a computer revolution of sorts in the country.