This evening, I tweeted that the biggest flaw with Aakash tablet was that it didn’t come pre-loaded with some (any) educational content. The Aakash project has been more or less a failure. It has not only faced manufacturing issues (including conflict with the OEM and within the IIT management), we all now know that it’s not really an Indian product, perhaps only an Indian design which again I am not quite sure of. Its tag as an “Indian product”, which Indian government and citizens prided on has been lost due to lack of management.
Those who have handled the tablet, including the US press, have talked about it being decent for its price. The tablet is distributed to students at a government subsidized cost of Rs 1,130. Decent.
Now lets come to the point why I think the whole Aakash strategy by the government is flawed. The government expects that schools would encourage students to buy the tablet as it wants to push digital education. But why would they? There’s no educational content available on the tablet. The apps that are available on the tablet are the app available on any commercial Android tablet. The government only recently appointed a four member technical committee to supervise the development of software ecosystem on Aakash 2 Tablet. It will take at least couple of months, if not years, until they deliver something. Color me surprise if schools and students find buying the tablet more of a burden. There’s absolutely no immediate advantage the tablet offers to students to splurge Rs 1,130.
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