Subsidized Aakash for students - we all are paying for it. But is that so bad?
The cheap $35 Aakash tablet, that has been creating a lot of buzz in the media over past couple of months is Nano-v2. When the launch of tablet was announced, I could see a lot of people overseas tweeting about it, and commenting on portals that covered the launch announcement. So the nature of buzz was the same - a product so cheap in its segment that a consumer would never have dreamt about. Even the cheap $199 Amazon Kindle Fire seems expensive if you compare it to the $35 Aakash.
Now, this is what Shamanth had to reveal on how the government is selling the device at fraction of the cost of iPad - GoI is procuring the tablet at a price of $50 from a Canadian manufacturer, Datawind. Now if the government is procuring it at $50, and selling it at $35, who is bearing the cost of the balance $15. The taxpayers, Shamanth says, and raises an important question - why should the taxpayers pay the price for someone else's tablet. Quite valid a question, I agree, But what it fails to note is the fact that the same tablet is being sold at two separate price points - the lower price point (which is subsidized) just for students, and the normal price point for general public - which is being sold just a shade above what the procurement cost of the tablet is. So, for general public, I think the prices are well justified - the margin at the end of the neither Datawind, nor the final seller is so huge that you would feel cheated.
Yes, the tablet is being provided at a subsidy to the students, and that subsidy is being borne by the taxpayers - but doesn't subsidy on any product work precisely the same way. And after all the aim/motive here is to facilitate the students with a device that increases their access to digital means of education. What the students finally use it for, that is upto them, but as far as the intent and the subsidy being provided for the same goes - I don't see anything wrong with it.
This is the same issue that will always be raised whenever you see some subsidy around. The issue has been raised many-a-times on subsidized education at IITs, with an argument that the effective contribution that a IIT graduate makes to the economy and the society is not noteworthy at all. I would like to give the example of something in the immediate vicinity here - InMobi, a company started hardly 4 years back, sitting on a mighty rich valuation today, creating numerous employment opportunities and making its presence felt globally. InMobi is started by a couple of IIT Kanpur alumni.
So does subsidy work? Had subsidy not been there, IIT would not have produced mighty graduates - most of who, I think I should add, prefer to and do work in India? Is subsidy the reason they are successful? I don't know, and we may never possibly know. But, raise the question - Was subsidizing their education, and providing them a more affordable education worth it? You can bet your ass it was!
Education and healthcare - these are two sectors that need to be seriously looked at. There used to be a time when neither quality education, nor quality healthcare was available in the country in abundance. Today we have both. But we need to improve more on it. If that means shelling out few pennies extra so that the students can be provided more facilities, and kept abreast of what's going on around them; then bring it on mate!
P.S.: There is a possibility that people going through this would bend it slightly and say that I'm in favor of opening up branches of premiere institutes like IITs and IIMs like mushrooms on shit-cakes. Just to clarify - No, I am strongly against that.
