OLPC India Foundation

OLPC India Foundation

Note: Currently, work in India is coordinated via countries@laptop.org. OLPC India Foundation is no longer representing OLPC in India.

OLPC India Foundation was started in July 2008 and has offices in both India and the USA. It comprises volunteers who believe that OLPC initiative can transform the future of India's underprivileged children and thereby that of India.

The OIF believes that India has the capability to educate all its children with OLPC. About 20 million underprivileged children enter India's primary schools at age 5. providing each of them with OLPC approach will cost about $4 Billion and running the program may cost another $1 Billion. That is way below what India spends on its Mid-Day Meal schemes.

India is developing a budget of Rs 350,000 crores or about $70 Billion over the next 5 years for its education purposes. These funds will be managed by the Central Government, about 80 percent of what the state governments spend. Some rich states have their own resources and they do not look up to the central government to fund them.

So while India can do it, its policymakers are obsessed by "cheap" rather than creating value. The announcement of the cheap tablet at $60 was initially planned to be distributed at $35. However, it has serious performance challenges even at $60 and may eventually end up inching close to or beyond the cost of deploying OLPC while the technological developments at OLPC may bring down its cost considerably.

Meanwhile millions of children may have been denied a future. OIF requests all members of India's diaspora to adopt their own village for OLPC initiative and over the next 10 years bring their own village to a new world that is unimaginable just as access to phone was just couple decades ago.

Details of OLPC India Foundation or OIF can be seen on www.olpcindia.net