143 - Aakash tablet cancelled by Govt - India Blooms

Aakash tablet cancelled by Govt India Blooms News Service (IBNS) New Delhi, Mar 24 (IBNS): The ambitious move by the Indian government to provide every child with a laptop comes to a halt as the Canada-based Datawind fails to deliver the required number of tablets in time, said media reports on Sunday. Human Resource and Development (HRD) Minister Pallam Raju decided to cancel the rest of the shipment stating the reasons being, delays in manufacturing, a faulty processor and low memory, according to a CNN IBN report. This project was very close to the earlier HRD Minister Sibal, who had launched it and had been sure that the project would be a milestone in Indian education. Hyped as world’s lowest cost tablet and an answer to the I-Pad, Aakash-2 was supposed to be supplied to 22 million students and faculty at 50 per cent subsidised cost. Only 17,000 of the targeted 1 lakh tablets have been sent to Indian Institute of Technology-Bombay so far. Manufacturer Datawind says that there are 29,400 in production at the moment. Even combined these numbers fall way below the target. The final launch price of Aakash 2 which was estimated at $35 has also doubled over the course of production, and the final product itself has many glitches. The Ministry is now reviewing the National Mission on Education through Information and Communication Technology (NMEICT). The Aakash tablet was to play a major role in this initiative. HRD Minister Raju admitted in a CNN IBN interview, that there was a gap in the supply and production. “The challenge is productionising it. That is where the failure has come. If the productionisation had happened on time, students would have accessed it.”