When it comes to what children can dream of achieving, Aakash (meaning “sky” in Hindi) should be the limit. But this may not be possible with disease, hunger and poverty robbing children in the developing world of their potential.

A tablet computer that costs only $50 brings a ray of hope, and may be able improve their odds.

Award-winning inventor Suneet Singh Tuli from India believes that his invention can level the playing field for children in developing countries.

Tuli’s $50 tablet computer, which runs on the Android operating system and is charged by a built-in solar charger, can expose children in developing countries to the same resources enjoyed by others in the developed world.

More importantly, he is willing to build and distribute his tablet computers in Pakistan.

To place a laptop in the hands of every school going child seems like an impossible goal, especially when the price of the gadgets usually exceed the monthly, and in some cases, the annual household income of many families in Pakistan, proving the existence of a great digital divide between the rich and the poor.

Tuli’s tablet computers, which were named “Aakash” by the Indian government but commercially sold under the name “UbiSlate” by Tuli’s own tech company DataWind, has the potential to bridge this divide.

There are millions of children in Pakistan who are unschooled. Those who are able to go to school are not provided with adequate education by teachers who use a curriculum laced with errors.

Therefore the Internet, which is the world’s largest library, provides young learners with an avenue to conduct their own research and learn by themselves.

With Aakash, Datawind aims to disrupt the education landscape for some 3 billion poor children at the bottom of the learning pyramid.

“I am willing to build the laptop in Pakistan to provide local economic benefits, in addition to making affordable technology available to the next generation of learners,” he said when met during his visit to the Ryerson University in Toronto, Canada.

With endorsement from the United Nations for his award-winning innovation, one would think that governments would be queuing up for this product. Surprisingly, however, only a dozen or so countries have purchased the gadget so far.

Tuli, who is a civil engineering graduate from the University of Toronto, said that he and his brother have come up with several other patent designs that have the potential to create more innovative solutions to facilitate learning in developing countries.

Asked what his motivation was to build the Aakash tablet computer, Tuli said, “I wanted to provide same opportunities for less fortunate children, that my own children have.”

Many have wrongly compared the Aakash computer to the iPad and other, more expensive laptops. Critics have also come up with a long list of the Aakash’s limitations.

To put to rest the misconceptions, Tuli explained that the Aakash was not designed to be an “iPad killer,” but to make available affordable technology for those who would otherwise have no opportunity to be a part of the developing digital world. He added that the primary aim for coming up with the Aakash was to improve literacy across the globe.

However, he said, the responsibility to improve Internet access and make available a digital library for their people lies heavily on governments.

Datawind is currently also working on solutions to enable governments to provide cheap Internet access. Its research team based in Canada has devised methods to reduce network load and improve mobile data speed by up to 10 times.

Despite its success, however, Tuli said that the main focus should not be on the product, but rather on how to improve the quality of education through innovative methods for the less fortunate.

By Murtaza Haider
 
(Dawn)