The Centre’s plan of digitising Indian classrooms by making the world’s cheapest tablet ‘Aakash’ available to students still seems distant. As maker Datawind had announced in March while shifting the project from IIT-Rajasthan to IIT-Bombay, the tablets were expected to be delivered by May. But not one piece is ready to be delivered to students yet, even though the new academic year is soon to commence.
Professor Deepak Phatak, in-charge of Aakash project at IIT Bombay, said, “We got the Ubislate7+ (the commercial name of the device) project in March, but the funds were transferred from Rajasthan only in April. Currently, we are developing applications and content for engineering colleges. We will inform about delivery in due course of time.
The tablet has been jointly developed by IIT Rajasthan and UK-based company Datawind.
In the first phase of the project, the Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD) ordered for one lakh tablets costing Rs. 2,776 each for 100 universities. They were to be available to students at a subsidised rate of Rs 1,138. The University of Mumbai had also placed an order of over 40,000 tablets in January as per MHRD’s instructions. A top official of University of Mumbai confirmed, “We have no intimation about Aakash till now.”
However, the tablet is being sold commercially. In response to an email sent by DNA, Datawind confirmed that Ubislate7+ had been launched. “Deliveries have started and the company will try to fulfil orders on a first-come-first served basis ,” the email said. However, it did not answer questions on the delivery of the tablets to Indian schools.
NK Sinha, additional secretary of MHRD and the mission director of Aakash and National Media Commission-Information and Communication Technologies (NMC-ICT), did not respond to DNA’s emails and remained unavailable for comment. ICT Director AK Singh refused to comment as well.
Professor Deepak Phatak, in-charge of Aakash project at IIT Bombay, said, “We got the Ubislate7+ (the commercial name of the device) project in March, but the funds were transferred from Rajasthan only in April. Currently, we are developing applications and content for engineering colleges. We will inform about delivery in due course of time.
In the first phase of the project, the Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD) ordered for one lakh tablets costing Rs. 2,776 each for 100 universities. They were to be available to students at a subsidised rate of Rs 1,138. The University of Mumbai had also placed an order of over 40,000 tablets in January as per MHRD’s instructions. A top official of University of Mumbai confirmed, “We have no intimation about Aakash till now.”
However, the tablet is being sold commercially. In response to an email sent by DNA, Datawind confirmed that Ubislate7+ had been launched. “Deliveries have started and the company will try to fulfil orders on a first-come-first served basis ,” the email said. However, it did not answer questions on the delivery of the tablets to Indian schools.
NK Sinha, additional secretary of MHRD and the mission director of Aakash and National Media Commission-Information and Communication Technologies (NMC-ICT), did not respond to DNA’s emails and remained unavailable for comment. ICT Director AK Singh refused to comment as well.
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