Promised the sky? College students yet to see Aakash tablet

Over four months after HRD minister Kapil Sibal launched world's cheapest tablet Aakash with much fanfare,

its intended beneficiaries --- the college students --- are yet to receive them.
Of the one lakh inaugural order around 600 tablets were given to Indian Institute of
Technology (IIT) students for trial and afew were distributed to students at the inaugural ceremony at Vigyan Bhawan.
"As per your information, no other studenthas received a tablet. And, therefore we have no feedback on how it works in different climate conditions," said a senior government official.
The HRD ministry had authorised the Indian Institute of Technology, Jodhpur, to procure one lakh Aakash tablets from private vendor Montreal based Datawind, a company promoted by Suneet Tuli. The IIT had developed Aakash prototype with the ministry.
The company had already supplied around 50,000 tablets to the IIT, Rajasthan for testing and distribution. Around 17 % tablets failed the test. But, even the remaining 83 % which had no problem have not been distributed.
IIT Rajasthan Director Prem Kalra was not available for comments. HT sent text messages and an email but he did not reply. However, other officials said the company had failed to rectify the problems cited by IIT students. Educationalinstitutions are not willing to take the tablets without IIT stamp of quality, the officials said.
Fed up with tug of war between the ministry and the IIT Rajasthan resulting in Aakash becoming controversial, the HRD ministry has decided that future distribution of tablets will be done by a public sector company, not an IIT.
"IITs are research organizations and have no clue handle logistics," the government official said. The Indian Telephone Industries, a PSU under the telecom ministry, will handle procurement, testing and distribution of Aakash 2 tablets to be launched in April this year.
For Aakash 2, the ministry has asked threeother IITs – Kanpur, Madras and Bombay --- apart from Jodhpur to finalise the specifications to procure the tablet at a price of US $ 35 to US $ 50.