Date: Mon, 24 Jul 2006 18:03:50 +0530
From: Subbiah Arunachalam
One laptop per kid not feasible for India!
20 July 2006
India's Education secretary Sudeep Banerjee's letter to his counterpart in
the Planning Commission , Rajiv Ratna Shah, strongly disapproving of the
'One Laptop Per Child' idea USD100 each, cost to be borne by government
for one million pieces floated by MIT, had instead asked the plan panel to
invest similar money for universalisation of secondary education.
Complete with technical problems pointed out by IIT, Madras, pedagogical
suspicions raised by NCERT and first-hand experience of a senior HRD
official, who found that the laptops have not even crossed the prototype
stage, Banerjee had said OLPC may actually be detrimental to the growth of
creative and analytical abilities of the child. The education secretary
had said, if the Planning Commission has the kind of money that would be
required for this scheme, it would be appropriate to utilise it for
universalisation of secondary education, for which a concept paper has
been lying with the PC for approval since November 2005, and on which, he
also made a presentation in the Planning Commission, presided over by the
deputy chairman.
A detailed report by a senior HRD official, who attended the OLPC workshop
in Massachusetts in May, found a series of faults with the concept and
strongly recommended against accepting it. Since the laptops are in the
prototype stage, the official found that hardware and functionality
testing, using open-source Linux software, is still to begin. He also
found out that due to the price of the battery and other hidden costs, the
laptops might actually cost USD200. It also needs to be checked and
certified in real time whether the connectivity distance between the local
server and these laptops would be 0.5 km or 3 km as claimed. Another
functional problem is that these laptops cannot be upgraded without
changing the motherboard , which would entail an expenditure of nearly 40%
of the total cost. The maintenance of these laptops will also require a
substantial investment and reserve stocks.
Source: Economic Times
Why not examine the feasibility of using Simputers instead of the
Negroponte computers?
