This tablet won’t cure India’s problems.

This refers to the news article “India launches world’s cheapest tablet computer” (October 6). Union Minister for Human Resource Development Kapil Sibal did not hesitate to take credit for “enabling the college-going students of India” by merely securing 1,00,000 pieces of the Tablet computer, ‘Aakash’. When on the one hand, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s Government plans to withdraw subsidies from essential items like petrol, LPG and fertilisers, it is amazing that Mr Sibal is willing to provide subsidised Tablets. This only tantamounts to rubbing salt on the Indian middle-class’s open wounds. Let’s not even talk about the poor who can barely manage one square meal a day thanks to runaway inflation.

Also, I would like to ask Mr Sibal if his dirt cheap Tablet would help the country’s marginalised students get jobs. Will it help poor students get admission into elite colleges? I doubt it. For that to happen the Government would have to do a lot more than produce some cheap gizmo. It would require some foresight, real planning and a lot of good governance skills.

Additionally, I am also concerned about the impact of this device on students for it might just serve more as a means of distraction than anything else. Let us not forget how mobile phones have become on a menace on every school and college campus.

Instead, I believe Mr Sibal would have done well to provide interest-free loans to meritorious students, for example, so that they could enroll themselves in good colleges and, if necessary, buy an Aakash tablet from the market.

It is high time the UPA regime focus on the pressing issues of the day which apart from education include inflation and corruption. Tempting the youth with such gadgets only seems like an attempt to win over youth loyalty.