India Rejects $100 Laptop Project
According to reports, the Government of India has rejected the “One Laptop per Child ” - OLPC program initiated by Prof Nicholas Negroponte of MIT. The program is aimed at providing children and educators in developing countries with PCs that are to cost around $100 each.
The Ministry of Human Resources Development (HRD) has reasoned that there are no proven benefits of providing children with their own laptops.
Reportedly, one Sudeep Banerjee wrote a letter addressed to the country’s Planning Commission, saying that the case for giving a computer to every single child is pedagogically suspect, and that this may actually impede the growth of creative and analytical abilities within the child.
In his letter, Banerjee further said that India is not in a position to visualize a situation going beyond the pilot stage for decades to come. Banerjee suggested that the education ministry rather spend money on strengthening secondary education in terms of other immediate needs, including classrooms and teachers, rather than on fancy tools such as these.
Besides, under the OLPC program, machines were originally slated to be delivered by the end of 2006. However it is now learnt that assembling and shipping will not begin until the organization receives orders along with payment for a total of at least five to ten million PCs.
The much-hyped One Laptop per Child project is supported by companies such as AMD, Red Hat, and Google; and countries including Nigeria, China, Brazil, Argentina, Thailand, and Egypt, out of which Egypt is believed to have already placed an order for around one million laptops.
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