[OLPC India] Disappointed in the progress being made in India

[Asko Kauppi]

As much as I do understand about the Indian way, it's more of a grass  
roots "things just work among the chaos" than of organized  
governmental control. This is just a statement, or an observation and  
one of the reasons I like India very much.

At this stage for OLPC, it's clearly easier to get governments s.a.  
Libya involved where governmental control is stronger. Also, India  
itself is too big; states of it should be regarded individually quite  
the same as European Union states are. They differ widely.

My point is optimistic about the long term success of OLPC approach  
also in India. The best way to prove is simply to have start cells,  
schools adopting the technique and way of thinking, then proceed from  
these. Maybe the local communications companies (Airtel etc.) could  
be involved as sponsors, to get the schools connected to Internet.

It would maybe be better for such cells to be in the villages rather  
than in big cities. This would also bypass the unfruitful "it's not a  
real PC"  debate which I think any current Indian IT person would  
happily bring up. To me, India seems very very very Windows  
oriented. :)  For now.

- asko


Frederick Noronha [फ़रेदरिक नोरोनया]  
kirjoitti 27.10.2007 kello 1:08:

> Hi all, I feel that this OLPC debate should be taken to wider fora too
> across South Asia. It is sad that, without much debate, a handful of
> bureaucrats can decide that the children of India do not deserve to
> get access to affordable computing (by using arguments like the
> traditional "we don't have blackboards and schools" for reasons best
> known to them).
>
> In this context, may I invite all interested to discuss this issue via
> the BytesForAll network too (around 1500 subscribers) on
> http://groups.yahoo.com/group/bytesforall_readers
>
> Best wishes, FN
> Co-founder, BytesForAll
> -- 
> Frederick Noronha http://fn.goa-india.org Ph 0091-832-2409490
> 11866 downloadable, sharable hi-res photos http://www.flickr.com/ 
> photos/fn-goa/
> List of user-groups of free software in India: http:// 
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