by teamrecFor all the progress that some of us in the connected India seem to notice, there are close to a billion people who have yet to touch its threshold in any which way we define it.
To begin with, they have little access to education, healthcare, clean water, roads, electricity, transport. You name it.
Just that they are usually not visible to us or we choose to look the other way.
Some of us take pity on them and choose the path of charity. That shows up in various non-profit organizations that try to do some good by appealing to the hearts of the donors. A large number of people have devoted their lives to such initiatives or turned it into a career.
The result still is that almost three times the India we inherited six decades ago is not ready to become a part of current human accomplishments.
Unless we start addressing these challenges differently from the way we faced them so far, its unlikely that these almost billion Indians will get to become part of the human journey as we know in this lifetime.
But its possible that we let every child born today not be deprived of all our accomplishments.
Its possible that anyone who is in school today can have aspirations the affluent billion folks on this planet live everyday.
It has to begin at the beginning. It has to begin with educating them in ways that make them productive members of our society.
In times of working on screen, it helps little to be able to manage on slate, and paper. The skills needed to simply be called literate require that we know how to use computers.
Computers have fast replaced most paper based knowledge. They have mostly replaced most productive work and creative activities in the world that is busy creating value.
An education that is not screen based, that does not use the affordable technologies that help children begin to explore their own talent, their potential and use it as a window to the world they are going to face helps little.
That divide began dawning on us a couple decades ago. Digital divide became a recognized emerging deficiency a decade ago. We don’t plan to fall behind. Its because some of us think ahead and get ahead, the rest of us fall behind.
The answer is not to chain those who are thinking ahead. The one choice we have is to understand how the human evolution is making it possible to treat every human being with dignity, removing drudgery, opening up a world of possibilities that they can achieve now.
In most of our calculations about progress we seem to not have been adequately mindful that a mind is a terrible thing to waste.
And we are currently wasting a billion of them.
That encouraged some of us to explore how can we affordably connect these folks to the world of possibilities that the privileged take for granted.
Professor Nicholas Negroponte, a founder of MIT Media Lab, chose a path that made some 3000 engineers explore and ask, how do we make education on screen possible for the most under privileged?
A few years later they came up with the concept of One Laptop per Child.
A Laptop because that is more personal. It can store power. It does not require a chair and table to sit on. It can be used like we were our shoes for learning does not happen only when we sit on a chair by a desk.
The laptop they developed can easily be seen as the third generation of computing. Personal Computing 3.0 or PC 3.0.
It marries pedagogy with technology.
It makes learning affordable and fun for both children and teachers.
It triggers creativity that we have not seen thus far.
What the government schools or even organizations like Pratham aspire to achieve in 5 years, the OLPC approach makes it possible in months, giving a child the rest of the primary schools life to acquire knowledge rather just be busy acquiring necessary skills.
And it does all that far cheaper than anything mankind has known for quality education.
For a lower cost than what the governments actually spend on primary education, using One Laptop per Child approach helps a child become a child again in the quest of learning.
On the physical front OLPC produces a laptop that is rugged like no other, is high tech beyond the reach of any other laptop there is in the market, connects its users even when there is no internet around and helps make learning become fun.
On the learning front it comes with an ability to develop all the skills we need as a human being to navigate the world of knowledge, learning and creativity.
On connectedness, it allows its users to connect regardless of local infrastructure challenges.
It’s a tablet PC, its an Amazon Kindle, it’s an e-paper, it’s a game console, it’s a music editor, its an ipod, its an iphone, its almost anything we want our computers to be.
And all this for Rs 8 a day per child or a dollar a week.
Can we afford as a nation not to spend Rs 8 per day on building our future? If we cannot invest $50 per year on our children’s future, what future are we planning to create?
Most affluent societies spend a third of their per capita income on its children. So in the US primary schools education costs a bit more than $10,000 per annum.
If we claim our per capita income has jumped up to $1000, should we not invest at least $100 on educating our children?
I continue to hear that the Ministry of Human Resources Development (MHRD) or the short form for Education Ministry proclaims on its website that there are no financial constraints to educating India.
I also hear from some of our leaders as to how to finance the need to learn on screen.
Something may be amiss. But to educate 25 million children to become capable citizens in step with the times we live in will cost us just an additional $2.5 billion a year if we fully finance it. Can we not afford it? That is less than what we spend on mid-day meal schemes.
If we think like entrepreneurs isn’t it eminently possible?
So OLPC India hopes to persuade the leaders of India to just set aside that pocket money that the parents have done for as long as we can recall to build the future generation.
One laptop per child laptop costs less than what it takes to just power a desktop.
By taking this approach, the nation gets a laptop free while meeting the environmental clarion call for zero cost.
And it changes the world of a child and of a nation.
All we need is a leader who can pause and pay attention to what is available to us today to change our future and not waste any more minds that make our nation.
For a mind is a terrible thing to waste. And for less than a ten rupee bill a day, we can change the world of a child and save the ten rupees as well by not powering up a desktop.
In other words, if we are ready to see it, we can change the world of our children for as little as zero rupees.
Are we ready?
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Mr. Satish Jha (as described by Wikipedia) is a writer, editor, economist, social activist, human rights activist, development professional and a successful social entrepreneur and information technology and healthcare management professional from India. He has been noted for his work in the area of using information technologies for development and has been a key contributor to this movement. Mr. Jha is currently President and CEO of One Laptop Per Child Foundation in India. He also co-chairs the World Information Technology Forum and co-edited the proceedings of WITFOR 2007 held in Addis Ababa along with Leon Strous. Several projects initiated, co-founded and supported by him have been awarded or nominated for awards internationally, including tarahaat.com (Stockholm Challenge), desi power (Development Marketplace), ehealthcare (Stockholm Challenge) among others.
Educated at the Fletcher School of Law & Diplomacy at Tufts University, and the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University he began his executive career as the head of a prestigious national publication in India. He co-founded the first computer created newspaper in India and has since worked at the intersection of technology and management.
A frequent expert source for the media, Mr. Jha is also a featured speaker on health care issues and entrepreneurship at MRI, TEPR, TiECon, Yale University, and George Washington University. He is also a Co-Chair of World IT Forum (WITFOR), based in Washington DC Co-Chairs the Alumni Association of The Fletcher School of Law & Diplomacy and is a Board Member of TiE-DC. He is also a Special Adviser to the Kofi Annan Center for Excellence in Information Technologies, a member of the United Nations Global Alliance for ICTs and Development (UN-GAID), chairs eHealthcare Foundation and Digital Partners. He co-edited with Leon Strous ICT for Development and Prosperity (2008).
Mr. Jha started his social innings with Jaya Prakash Narayan and that greatly influenced his orintation and work in th years ahead. He worked in the villags, youth and civil rights movement and co-founded India’s first monthly journal of civil rights movement and daily newspaper Jansatta along with Prabhash Joshi and went on to edit Dinamaan of the Times of India Group in the mid-eighties.
He started his corporate career with pharmaceutical major Roche at its headquarters in Switzerland and followed it with co-founding James Martin & Co and META Group India and leveraging his corporate learning into the social and development space.
Mr. Jha also has worked with social movements, including coordinating Youth Against Famine, worked with landless labourers, founded landless labourers cooperative bank at a village for educational purposes, and co-founded PUCL Bulletin along with Arun Jaitley (later day Law Minister of India). He worked with Hari Sharan to found DESI Power and FREND in Switzerland and Tarahaat.com along with Ashok Khosla (founder of Development Alternatives and Tarahaat) and Baramati Conference along with Sharad Pawar.
He co-founded Digital Partners and over the years it supported dozens of information technology initiatives including Tarahaat.com, Drishtee, SKS, eHealth-care foundation among them. He also founded the Healthcare Round table in Washington DC and is a Board Member of TiE-DC and was also a co-founder of TiE-Pune.
Some of the organizations he started, co-founded, seeded, supported and mentored include; PUCL Bulletin, DESI Power, FREND, Janasatta (Indian Express Group), Digital Partners, Baramati Conference, Tarahaat.com (multiple rounds of funding and Stockholm Challenge Award), James Martin & Co, META Group India, eHealth-Care Foundation, Drishtee (Now funded by Acumen), www.obviousideas.com (Board of Advisors, US-headquartered boutique management consulting and training firm).
