The Rs 500 ($10) computer has a name – Sakshat

The Sakshat laptop computer is set to be unveiled today in Tirupathi.

The Rs 500 is a target price, of course. As of now, the Sakshat would cost around $ 10, and maybe even more. The officials believe that mass production would bring costs down to the magic price of $ 10  or Rs 500 – a price that makes it affordable for even small schools and poor villagers.

The Indian government is planning the new Sakshat laptop as an ambitious e-learning program National Mission for Education for 18000 colleges and 4000 universities across India.

There is a lot of skepticism, though. According to current hardware prices, even ultra cheap RAM, LCD screens, processors would together cost a lot more than the price of Rs 500. Show how is it going to happen?

In the scenario envisioned by the National Mission for Education, school and college students who own the laptops would be abel to access lectures, notes and specific help from anywhere in India bringing about a revolution in education.

For this purpose, the National Mission for Education would make an e-content feed available, and many publishers would participate in providing content for the Sakshat laptop computer. The publishers whose names are currently mentioned as part of the programme include Macmillan, Tata McGraw Hill, Prentice-Hall and Vikas Publishing all of who have been approved to upload content into the e-feed.

The target for the program right now is to get the hardware and software as cheap as possible, so that number of students can benefit from this program. Free access to the broadband internet in schools and colleges would also go a long way so students using the Sakshat computer can download e-books and e-journals. The vice-chancellor of the University of Andhra Pradesh, Prabhakar Rao, who explained the program to the media said that the Sakshat would be launched from his university in Andhra.

This National Mission for Education was launched in order to increase the number of students with access to internet and modern tools. With more that half a billion people below 25 years’ age in India, only 11% of this mass gets enrolled in the universities as compared to double the number in China. China flaunts 180 million people with broadband connection which is five times that of India.

Claimed connectivity options and technical specifications for the Sakshat computer are sketchy at the moment. We will only have to wait for a few more hours, anyway.

Designed by scientists at the Vellore Institute of Technology, the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore, the Indian Institute of Technology in Madras and the state-controlled Semiconductor Complex, the laptop has 2 GB of Ram, Ethernet and wireless connectivity. In order to lower the cost of the laptop would not be using the Windows operating system.

RP Agarwal, the Higher Education Secretary, confidently told the newspapers, “At this stage, the price is working out to be $20 [Rs 1,000] but with mass production it is bound to come down.” If the Sakshat makes it way to the Indians at a mere cost of $ 10 or for that matter $ 20, it would successfully beat the OLPC XO that was designed by scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the US.

That would make it, well, the Tata Nano of computers.

Not so fast, say the critics and doubters. Many are skeptical about the commercial sustainability of the laptop.  Amulya Gopalakrishnan at Indian Express says, “If that sounds fabulous, it probably is. Even with a huge Government subsidy, it is unclear how ten dollars can get you much more than a souped-up calculator.”

That is what remains to be seen. Can the Indian government pull off something like this – Tata Motors was a company on a mission. Even if the government and officials had the vision and dedication, would it all be just wishful thinking?

Many bloggers and foreign newspapers are understandably skeptical. Atanu Dey, a blogger, wrote that if the Indian government was successful in pulling off this technological miracle, it would imply that either other global computer manufacturers and industries are either incompetent, or else they are a part of a scam, producing stuff at low prices and selling them at a huge margin.

The price of Sakshat has been dramatically dropped since 2007 when the estimated cost was $47. Having the designing been done with Students and Researchers allows to reduce the fare even more.

So Rs 500 or Rs 1000, as long as the computer is beneficial to students, the content good, we would nto complain even if it is not a full-fledged computer. The Simputer, which promised low-cost computing and vanished, still remains fresh in memory.

So here’s waiting for you, little computer. Come to us.