Nicholas Negroponte’s pet project of Media Lab Asia to bridge the digital divide in developing countries like India had never taken off in India. It was a pet project of Pramod Mahajan when he was the IT and communications minister during the previous NDA government. There were many doubts about the project’s suitability in India at this point. But the project met with several obstacles like MIT pulling out of the project and so on. Now a senior government official is saying India is not interested in getting involved in Nicholas Negroponte’s One Laptop Per Child scheme. This is a project to provide kids in developing countries with laptops that cost $100 apiece.
If India pulls out, that will be a big setback to the ambitious plan which depends on depends on support, and big orders, from the governments of developing countries. India’s education ministry has termed the laptop project as “pedagogically suspect”. Education Secretary Sudeep Banerjee said: “We cannot visualize a situation for decades when we can go beyond the pilot stage. We need classrooms and teachers more urgently than fancy tools.” The government would rather spend the money on improving the existing education plans.
Rafat: Mobile it is in India…Gates has it right, I think.