220 mn students to get low-cost tablet free!
Aakash to get 100 p.c. desi; might power Aadhaar
If Union Communications and IT Minister Kapil Sibal stands by his words, it might be reality soon
CMN Correspondent
Tuesday, February 07, 2012
BANGALORE, INDIA: Union Minister for Communications and IT Kapil Sibal had some great news for India to rejoice on Monday.
One, that production of the world’s cheapest tablet and India’s pride Aakash PC would be going completely indigenous, in all certainty with a ‘Made in India’ tag.
"We are now going to diversify production base and indigenize Aakash tablet. We are planning to create ecosystem for end-to-end development of Aakash in India,” said Sibal, who was addressing the Indian Semiconductor Association’s Vision Summit here.
He sounded upbeat about the kind of scope it offers to the local developers, manufacturers and education & research institutions, especially the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) and Industrial Training Institutes (ITIs) in the country.
As of now, IIT-Rajasthan has taken up the mantle of leading the way. Soon, IITs of Kanpur, Madras and Mumbai would chip in and guide the project through its next stages, one of which includes increasing the speed to 800 MHz from current 300 MHz.
Secondly, the other ambitious project of India – the Unique Identification number (Aadhaar) – could leverage the power of the Aakash.
“Aakash and Aadhaar can be used to resolve many of the issues. Apart from a law, we need an ecosystem to reduce the possibilities of corruption,” said Sibal.
So far, Aakash is priced at around Rs.. 2,300, but it would be slashed by Rs.. 800, once the production capacity is scaled up to 10 lakh.
Once that becomes reality, 220 million students can hope for a free tablet, with government subsidizing the rate (Rs. 1,500) by 50 per cent and schools bearing the rest of the cost, said the minister, who also handles the Human Resource Development portfolio. According to the HRD Ministry, there is a requirement for an additional 22 crore units of Aakash.
As for the electronic systems design and manufacturing sector, Sibal observed, “We need a strong policy, otherwise we would be forced to import $300-billion worth of electronics by 2020, which is higher than the imports on crude oil.”
“ESDM is also a meta resource and is used by auto, defence, aviation and other industries, and accounts for 30 per cent of the bill of materials of electronic goods.”
He added that the Centre had plans to set up electronic clusters and semiconductor wafer fabs.
©CyberMedia News