The most ambitious ultra low-cost Aakash Tablet is yet to see the light of day, move towards a crash of offering the world’s cheapest computer in hands of poor.
Earlier reports, Indian Government announced the failure of production of low cost computing device as the supply of 1 lakh Aakash 2 tablets by March 31, 2013 from the Canada-based Datawind hanged.
Former HRD minister Kapil Sibal’s ambitious proposal to provide cheapest device to all Indian students as well as across world is now reviewing sathe.
Meanwhile, to ensure supply at deadline 31March, HRD Ministry has written to the IIT-Bombay review that Datawind has been set a target to comply with its supply orders as per the terms and conditions, failing which “action will be taken against the company”.
“The challenge is productionising it. That is where the failure has come. If the productionisation had happened on time, students would have accessed it,” HRD Minister M.M. Pallam Raju told reporters.
The world’s cheapest device, Aakash-2 was promised to be made available to 22 million students and faculty at 50 per cent subsidised cost of Rs 1130.
In Second phase, around 1 lakh pieces initially ordered by govt to Darawind, but just about 25,000 pieces have supplied by the company.
Facing a big challenge to enable a student to access content at an affordable price through enabling environment, the non-committal phase would be proceed as the ministry is awaiting a report from a committee headed by Rajendra Pawar before taking a call.
