Negroponte and Pitroda…

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/1698603.cms

I Read this news today. I am happy to hear the HRD decided not to go for this $100 mn experiment.

To put things in perspective, if one wanted to see these machines in each of 638K villages in India, not more than two students per village will get the computer. And if it is not every village, whats the rationing system of the Govt?
If you compare the cost of this initiative with the National eGovernanace Programme of $500 mn over next 4 years, one is talking about spending the equivalent of 20% of the much discussed, long pending initiatives on an ‘experiement’ that no has tried and tested yet.

And then, who wants to discuss the following in detail-

• $100 mn is only cost of the machines, how about the overall, procurement, distribution and administration?
• Who is going to train the trainers (teachers in villages) to teach them to students? whats the associated cost?
• Are the teachers motivated and qualified enough to ‘learn and teach’ operations of the new machine?
• Is there no variable cost involved? who will bear that? Who takes care of the upgrades and at what cost?

Would it not be better if you leave it to market forces and spend more of your energy as a Govt on ensuring that the e-infrastructure is in place. The best approach will be to first go for one laptop per panchayat and one laptop per school so that the ‘take-up’ is ensured. This itself could be done on the national scale so as to achieve the critical mass and hence the paradigm shift.

If one needs to argue the case further, i would belive more on the pitroda model of ‘intermediaries’/'pay as you go’ (like the std booths and now cybercafes) than the negroponte model of ‘onwership’.
I will for sure want to wait and watch this space.