17th Jan 2012
Learning lessons from India's Akash: How not to fall in a Paataal!!
Now that the Akash story has begun to unravel, hope the media takes up the matter earnestly and help government take better decisions. How one wishes they had asked hard questions right in the beginning and saved India the embarrassment of living with the ignominy of failing to do what will not make a high school student in the US proud!
First: The fact that the government got into producing a cheap laptop without any track record, without any patent, without any idea of what to do was a testimony to its ineptitude. Just imagine if the Government had taken a similar path when it came to deciding on whether to allow mobile phones in India? Will we have any mobile phones by now? How much time we could have lost in reaching out to our villages?
Secondly, there is nothing India about the cheap, Taiwan procured laptops.
Thirdly, the fact that it was tendered shows that there was no contribution of MHRD or IIT in making it happen.
Fourthly, IIT Jodhpur is a nascent body where not even a single batch has passed out, it does not even have a full fledged campus, or faculty or design department and lacks experience in every area of its claimed expertise. How can it even help create anything. In fact Prem Kalra was made a director because N K Sinha found him as someone to eager to please him.
Fifth, computers market is so competitive that no one can really produce a much cheaper device for the same quality or specs.
Sixthly, the two main contributors to cost reduction are a technological change of an order of magnitude and scale of production. India has neither technology creation prowess of the US nor the scale of China. Its impossible to best either.
Seventh: Datawind has no track record of any excellence at any scale in electronics and computer industry. There is no way it could have created anything cheaper for the same quality when the companies with technology and scale could not do it.
Eight: 100,000 is too small a quantity to effect any savings of any kind. It can only mean a percentage discount from the existing manufacturers and that is what Datawind did. Bought SKD from Taiwan and stamped it made by Datawind.
Ninth: Some of the things Datawind says are true and embarrassing. It said that to make a tablet moisture-proof and shock-proof will push the prices beyond $1500 per piece. Just imagine the innovation, at least 20+ and state of the art that no laptop other than OLPC has and that still sells for $300 only. Suggests that cost reduction has to be designed into the product not bought off the shelf.
Tenth: Prem Kalra, Kannan and N K Sinha are not ready to be admitted to a class in product creation. They know what they do well. But that is not product creation and they cannot create something, as Datawind man said in his interview to Mint.
Eleventh: The purpose of MHRD is supposed to be education. It is focusing on device instead. That is a pity and shows that MHRD may not have its priorities right.
Twelfth: Now its clear that Akash is too expensive at any price and the Government was better off choosing from among the technologies available.
Thirteenth: The government claimed that its cheap laptop or tablet was an answer to MIT's OLPC. Now Datawind man says that he will take more than $1500 competing with what are standard features in an OLPC XO when OLPC is available in India for $300. The choice should have been clear from the word go.
India can create its own computer only by doing things right. It should create a five year project, set aside Rs 1000 crores, ask the world's best technologists, educationists, designers etc to come together and create the NEXT generation computer and NOT imitate several generations behind OLPC.
Even now MHRD seems to have a way out. It should adopt a 3 pronged strategy. 1: Put up a project and set aside Rs 1000 crores with a 3 to 5 year time line to create the next gen computer. 2: Adopt OLPC as the device for village schools immediately and 3: Put together a global team of Indians to learn from the failed experiment that is Akash.
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Satish Jha
