Aakash 2: India's low cost tablet dream come true?

Aakash, Government of India’s ambitious project to provide low cost tablets to the students of our country, has been embroiled in controversy right from the word go. Aakash was a reality that was living India’s $35 laptop dream. Everyone sang praises until the first batch of tablets reached the students. The original Aakash had a lot of things to worry about – a slew of outdated specs, a gigantic number of pre-orders (over 3 million, which they haven't yet managed to deliver), faulty shipped devices and more. While the dust hasn't settled on these issues, Datawind starting falling out with its partners, its assembler Quad Electronics and also IIT Rajasthan, who was responsible for testing the tablet. While speculations of scrapping the Aakash project were rife, Datawind took media by surprise by winning the bid for Aakash 2, which means it had to again supply 1,00,000 tablets to the government under a new tender, with slightly updated specs. However, Datawind’s relationship with IIT Rajasthan was still strained and under scanner until one day the news broke out that the project will now be handled by IIT Bombay.Aakash 2 was launched last month with better specs, especially the issues of touchscreen and low processing speed have been taken care of. Meanwhile, IIT Bombay has been focussing on developing nifty educational apps and content for Aakash 2. About 14,000 units of the Aakash 2 are now being tested as an educational platform across 250 engineering colleges in India. Tech2 spoke to the project head at IIT Bombay, Prof Deepak Phatak, who shares with us his experience right from taking over the Aakash project from a sister institution to building a digitally evolved Indian educational system. We also have inputs from Suneet Singh Tuli, CEO, Datawind, who tells us what’s happening with the original Aakash and the plans for Aakash 2. So, are things going to be different this time? That’s the question on everyones mind!IIT Bombay steps-inThe battle between Datawind and IIT-Rajasthan just refused to die early this year. There were umpteen reports about the two bickering and may have even given the ministry some sleepless nights. Earlier, Mr. Tuli had said how the institute over-emphasised on concerns regarding Aakash’s quality and functionality, allegedly to favour other firms, and outrightly blamed IIT Rajasthan for Aakash’s failure. Finally, IIT Bombay took over the Aakash 2 project.Prof Deepak Phatak tells us that IIT Bombay was approached when the project was still with IIT Rajasthan, but the institute refused it then as they didn’t want to sabotage the efforts of their sister institute. Only after IIT Rajasthan wrote to the ministry expressing their desire to back-out of the project that IIT Bombay stepped in. “It’s a two year project that involves procuring 1 lakh tablets to be deployed in engineering colleges in a bid to enhance the quality of education. It also entailed developing of appropriate educational apps and content to facilitate the learning process. While procuring the tablets was just a part of it, our main focus was on ensuring it’s efficiency in delivering educational content and aid the efforts of teachers and students. Along with developing educational apps and content and deploying them in college, it also includes testing the tablets completely for software and hardware,” says Prof Deepak Phatak.Aakash 1 & 2 – What’s the difference?Speaking about the point of difference, Prof Deepak Phatak says, “When we got the project, we had the mandate to complete the procurement of the tablets from Datawind. There were two ways we could go about it, one was to float another tender, but it would easily taken about a year, as it would also involve testing and approving the initial sample. We didn’t have a year, so we decided to go by IIT Rajasthan’s procurement process and then we would do a single tender enquiry, we did our own enquiry to Datawind. Also, we had a mandate from the ministry that the price at which we procure should not exceed more than Rs. 2,274.”

Click here for full story