The Hindu : Opinion / Editorials : The quest for a people's computer

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Wednesday, Jun 22, 2005

Opinion

Opinion - Editorials

The quest for a people's computer

The widespread use of computers in various walks of life has remained an elusive goal in countries where a deep digital divide exists and this is primarily due to economic poverty and illiteracy. India stands out in the effort to bridge the gap by encouraging the development of affordable computing devices, lending support through credible agencies such as the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research. A new range of low cost computers unveiled recently represents the promising outcome of one such project undertaken by Encore Software. These "portable desktop" devices are likely to be sold in a price band of Rs.10,000 to Rs.20,000; the prices can drop below this band if the demand is buoyant when they come to market. By the standards of the developed world, a computing device with an open source operating system and a suite of application software at a street price of just over $200 is an attention grabber. The CSIR-supported Mobilis range has naturally made headlines along with other designs for $250 personal computers. The new Indian products are said to be capable of handling a complete set of tasks such as internet access, email, multimedia, word processing, and spreadsheets. However, they cannot handle more complex processing functions that conventional PCs can. The challenge of coming up with a fully functional low cost design may have been well met, but this is only a beginning; it must now be followed up with a plan for mass manufacture and in such volume as to drive prices even lower than envisaged.

The Mobilis range has been launched at a time when international attention is focussed on building a device that is both portable and adequately flexible to avoid obsolescence in the short term. The Media Lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology has pegged this goal on a $100 laptop that it wants to develop by 2007, using a combination of low cost display technologies and slim software. The inspiration for the project comes from the encouraging experience of its founder, Nicholas Negroponte, in rural Cambodia where students were given laptops as learning tools. As in the Indian effort, the pricing of the MIT computer is contingent on demand levels of at least one million units per order. Achieving such a scale of production for the CSIR-sponsored computer design may not be difficult provided the Central and State Governments turn their policies on expansion of education, e-governance, and telemedicine into concrete programmes and come up with tax concessions for individual buyers. Success of the Mobilis platform also depends in part on cheaper access to the internet, a key determinant of computer use especially among students. Measures to reduce the cost involved in surfing the net must be pursued vigorously. A combination of progressive policies could ensure for India's low cost computer the success that the Simputer, a hand-held gadget, hoped to achieve but could not.

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