If all goes well, a radical new handheld, talking, Indian-made computer called the Simputer should be nearing production even as you read th...
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If all goes well, a radical new handheld, talking, Indian-made computer called the Simputer should be nearing production even as you read this. If all goes well. Hailed all over world because of the innovative technology used and wonderfully cooperative way in which the Simputer was conceived, the little machine has been struggling against lapsed deadlines through most of this year. It has got to the point where, after two years of development, one of its founders told this newspaper it is best to stop talking about the Simputer until it actually hits the market.
This is the problem with most of Indian science: the inability to get past the hype and get a technology to the market when it is needed most. This coupled with the inability to create a cohesive vision. We8217;ve seen it in every sphere of science: from the stalled light combat aircraft, which we are told will now not see squadron service before 2010; to genetically engineered crops, where we8217;re lagging far behind the dragon to our north. No one can argue the fact that simple yet clever technologies like the Simputer are what India needs now more than ever before. We know only too well that income gaps are becoming unbridgeable canyons, that a yawning technological divide has riven India into a country of many coexisting centuries. The Simputer 8212; no more expensive than a 21-inch TV 8212; is a bridge between these chasms of money and the mind.
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If you believe that computing for the masses is a cliche, consider that the Simputer 8212; if used by sensible, visionary bureaucrats and scientists 8212; could change everything from tortoise-slow money orders to the deaths of babies in rural areas. That is not far-fetched. Only the other day the telecom minister, Pramod Mahajan, announced that postmen would carry mobile phones to allow unconnected rural consumers to reach out and touch someone. It isn8217;t a stretch then to imagine they could carry a wirelessly-connected Simputer that could instantly transmit money orders cross country. Alternately, travelling health officials could send health parameters of pregnant women to bigger base hospitals. These are just some fields of dreams. Already countries as far afield as Italy and South Africa have dreamed up uses for the Simputer 8212; once it hits the market. And if it doesn8217;t become a commercial success, which is a possibility, what is to stop the government from stepping in and becoming its prime backer? Only one thing: that vision thing.
