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Why not a Rs.5000 computer?

A fully featured low cost computer to bridge the digital divide in the less developed world remains elusive, despite advances in computing technologies. Affordability is a major barrier to wider computer and Internet access. When the non-profit One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) project was presented to the World Economic Forum in 2005, outlining the goal of providing a hundred dollar laptop to every poor child, it received a rapturous welcome. Children and teachers who got the first bright green XO laptops under the project during trials in countries such as Nigeria were thrilled. Few will argue about the laptop’s virtues: it has no moving parts; can withstand hot weather, rough handling, monsoons, and dust; sports a backlit screen visible in daylight; runs on open source software; and wirelessly connects to the Internet. For these reasons the OLPC product, which is yet to reach its aspirational price point, enthused digital divide campaigners, including the then United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan. Fifty countries have shown interest. But true scaling up is an arduous exercise and needs massive manufacturing facilities. Unsurprisingly, therefore, the recent exit of chip-making giant Intel, which joined OLPC last year, is seen as a serious setback to the project.

The difficulties involved in scaling up low cost computing devices to reach the masses are all too familiar in India. The indigenously developed Simputer and the low cost Mobilis — once hailed as wondrous answers to the digital divide — did not make it to the market. By contrast, mobile phone penetration has grown by leaps and bounds. The trends in mobile telephony touching most sections of the working class — the wireless subscriber base grew to over 225 millions by November 2007 — show that the right devices with a good value proposition are assured of success. The psychological equivalent in the automotive world is the introduction of Tata Motors’ Nano at the inconceivably low price of Rs.1 lakh. If the IT industry sets itself a benchmark of, say, Rs.5,000 and achieves scales of manufacture, it could yet come up with a computer of inestimable educational and social value in rising India where deprivation on a gigantic scale is a reality. The advantages of running thin computing systems, where the bulk of software resides in a server and not with the user, make it technically possible to produce low cost but versatile and quality machines. Next generation mobile networks with higher bandwidths can provide wireless Internet connectivity. Only such bold, technologically and socially imaginative, out-of-the-box approaches can connect India’s underprivileged, above all children, to the knowledge economy.

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