One Laptop per child comes to India

One Laptop per child comes to India

New Delhi, Nov 18: Gifting India's 110 million 6-to-12-year-olds a laptop each is the goal of a campaign launched in New Delhi this evening by a global group called 'one laptop per child.' ''For India, we are starting this programme from today,'' OLPC India spokesman Satish Jha told journalists as he spelt out the campaign's 'Give One Get One' sales pitch.

The idea, he said, was to let consumers pay $400-- roughly Rs 20,000-- and get a specially built-- robust, rugged, dust proof, water proof, sun friendly-- laptop while another is sent to a needy child.

The purpose was to give kids a machine that won't stop working no matter someone spills coffee on it or drops it to the floor, he said.

''If you can't get the child to the classroom, let the classroom go to him,'' said Jha. ''At a very small cost, you can place an advanced classroom in the hands of every single child in India.

''We plan to distribute three million XOs in India in the first year of its operations and aim to reach all needy children in India over the next five years,'' said Jha.

He said the laptop dubbed XO was developed by the founder of Media Lab, a department within the School of Architecture and Planning at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

The 'Give One Get One' - G1G1 - programme put together by former MIT professor Nicholas Negroponte was initiated in the US around September 2007.

XO combines the functionalities of a conventional PC or a laptop along with making it child friendly with a slew of applications designed to encourage interactive learning.

It consumes only 1 watt of power and works as a dual-boot system, running both open source and Microsoft applications with internet connectivity options, he said.