With his raised right fist pointing to the sky and the shining gadget in his left hand, as Kapil Sibal unveiled the world's cheapest tablet computer, Aakash, on Wednesday, it was difficult not to ask this one question: whose brilliant idea was it to give the tablet the same name as that of a nuclear capable surface-to-air missile that is going to cost the Indian taxpayer Rs 23,000 crore? That apart, the tablet raises more questions.
Be that as it may, but as the human resources development minister distributed the Rs 1,750 tablet to 500 students, he made a huge promise to the country's digital have-nots: sky is no longer the limit when it comes to hitching a ride on the information superhighway.
It's a promising gizmo. It's features - a resistive touchscreen, an SD card slot fitted with a 2GB card and supporting up to 32GB capacities, two USB ports, Wi-Fi, video conferencing, 3-hour battery life, 600MHz processor, 256MB RAM and Android 2.2 - are enough to dazzle the India on the wrong side of the digital divide. "This is for all of you who are disempowered. This is for all of you who have no access. This is for all those who are marginalized," Sibal said at the launch as eager applause followed. "Our goal was to break the price barrier for computing and internet access," he said. "The Aakash is proudly made in India, and is destined to revolutionise computing and internet access for the world."
No doubt, India has beaten the world in creating the world's cheapest tablet. No doubt, Aakash has the potential of being a game-changer as it can empower India's poor - just the way the PC did in the 1980s in the West. But it will be a big mistake to confuse potential with performance. "It's rather silly to confuse investment in technology with investment in education. Access to internet is not going to revolutionise the Indian educational system which is falling apart. Even Steve Jobs didn't over exaggerate the importance of his gadgets like Sibal is doing," says sociologist Shiv Visvanathan. "What about investment in teachers, what about investment in rural schools?"
The government has to worry about investment in many other sectors such as rural electrification and Wi-Fi connectivity to make Aakash work. With even the Capital's satellite towns facing power cuts, it's anybody's guess how the tablet with just 3-hour battery can be re-charged in villages that get power for a couple of hours a day. "No thought has been given to this issue. Among the emerging economies, India has the worst per capita power consumption. There are thousands of schools without electricity. How will the students recharge their tablets," says an official in the ministry of science and technology. "You just can't dump technology on rural communities and hope it will work."
The fact that the tablet connects to the internet with Wi-Fi alone could be a bigger problem. Even big cities in India have few Wi-Fi hotspots and outside them, the service vanishes. So, the students in the villages will have to wait till India moves to 4G technology that will offer wireless internet the same way mobile phone operators provide wireless telephony services. But that will raise the question of billing as the 4G business model hasn't been made public as yet. "The tablet may cost as little as Rs 500 but what about the monthly Wi-Fi bill which may go up to Rs 1000? Can the poor pay so much? Is the government going to provide free Wi-Fi in villages? Or this is just a plan to provide captive customers to 4G operators," asks the science and technology official, speaking on condition of anonymity.
In the hype surrounding the Aakash launch, many important questions have been ignored and that has raised doubts about its success, particularly when the government is yet to come out with the way the tablet will be distributed. "Distribution of technology is not a solution of problems rural India faces. It seems it's just a tool to create migrant workers for urban areas. You are connecting them to a world they don't need to know and what they need to know is being ignored," says Vibha Gupta of Rural Women Technology Centre, an NGO in Wardha. "Just like mobile phone hasn't helped the agriculture sector, this tablet too will not help the villages. It may help the sale of computer games."
If activists are skeptical about Aakash, they have strong reasons to be so. In May 2005, a Rs 10,000 mobile computer, called Mobilis, was launched amid much fanfare. "This marks India's leap into the future of PC technology...," Sibal, then minister for Science and Technology, had said at that time. Today, nobody knows about Mobilis. Earlier, in 2002, a handheld computer called Simputer was launched to "give the villagers access to computing power". Simputer, too, is history now. To make sure that Aakash doesn't end up in a trashcan, the government has to do more than just make it sound like a deadly missile.
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