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On 26/09/10 09:03, Roland Tarver wrote:
Me too, but in vain I fear - they have to make 130 million of them before they even cost as much as a years MS profits. The room for corruption is in fact a large nation.On Fri, Sep 24, 2010 at 10:55 PM, tom brough<tombrough@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:On 24/09/10 06:16, Henry Bremridge wrote:On Thu, Sep 23, 2010 at 09:23:08PM +0100, Eion MacDonald wrote:Regret, Indian Export control does not allow tax subsidised devices to be exported. You won't see it any where outside India at Indian price or only smuggled out ones. Also how does politician or civil servant on this project get his income from this low price. As one who has dealt in India with Indian States and Federal government servants and politicians I had an automatic 'admin cost' [which is not low!] which was put into our costings on any transaction so we could ensure delivery of product.As a cynic? 1/ Get the money, tax rebate, whatever 2/ Don't deliver a useable product but in the meantime jobs will be made available for a select few with help from suppliers who need to be shown to be supporting India 3/ Bank the profits and the votes 4/ In a few years, scrap everything unsold (ie all bar maybe one or two) and complain bitterly and very publicly about "foren" competition. (I admit that I started the assumption on the basis that the goods could not be delivered, equally Ministers could ask large firms to help with design etc, in exchange for said help Ministerial assistance could be provided with the interminable paperwork)I know that I tend to look at the world with rose tinted glasses when it comes to initiatives like this but .... I don't think the Indian Government would do that in this case. Indian culture takes education very seriously and not for granted.... The Government is subsidising this project. And whether it is a success or a failure, I think in this case the Indian Government is following a determination to get some sort of ICT infrastructure into the classroom. Remember that if you based initiatives on previous track records Moon landings and rocket flight would have been abandoned long before they started. Accepted that OLPC has flopped due to some wobbles at the top with regard to installing MS products, which subsequently doubled the price because of the extra grunt needed in the hardware to cater for XP(ired). But I would really hope that Microsoft arn't going to be allowed to interfere with this one.Me too :-)
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