In response to MediaNama's RTI on the Aakash Tablet, the Ministry of Human Resource Development has passed the buck (and the RTI) to the Indian Institute of Technology Rajasthan, Jodhpur. From their responses, we've gleaned the following information: - The final price of the Aakash Tablet is $49.98 per unit (or Rs 2276 at the exchange rate at the time of the order), which includes taxes, levies, freight, insurance, servicing and documentation. - The HRD Ministry has released Rs 47.72 crore to IIT Rajasthan for testing low cost access-cum-computing devices and hardware and software optimization of low cost access devices. - The ministry says that it does not have details of the tender/document/financial bid/payment made by IIT Rajasthan to Datawind. - IIT Rajasthan was given the task of procuring and testing the Aakash Tablet. Datawind was given the pilot of procuring 100,000 pieces "for the purpose of testing by students all over India in different climatic and usage conditions". - Norms for distribution of the Aakash Tablet to students have been not been finalzied. - The HRD Ministry says that it has no information regarding the number of tablets provided to IIT Rajasthan by Datawind, the list of educational institutions to which Aakash Tablets have been distributed, the total number of tablets that have been issued and how many students in each educational institution have been issued the Aakash Tablet. Note that, in Parliament, HRD Minister Kapil Sibal said that 6440 tablets were supplied to IIT Rajasthan, of which it has…
