India’s Future Rests With the Markets

India's Future Rests With the Markets

NEW DELHI â€" Hours after the Indian government introduced its own tablet computer, Steven P. Jobs died. There were no other omens.

In fact, on Oct. 5, 2011, and in the weeks that followed, the Ministry of Human Resource Development appeared to have reason to be confident and proud, and it received somewhat congratulatory world attention for its tablet, called Aakash. At just over 2,000 rupees, or about $35, it would be the lowest-priced tablet in the world, and it would be distributed to millions of Indian students at an even lower price.

That was the plan.

But, less than 18 months after its introduction, the future of the tablet looks uncertain, even though the government is trying to rescue it. Aakash has been hit by production delays and quality concerns, and its very relevance has been put to question by the sudden rise of competing low-cost tablets from private companies.

Aakash is yet another reminder from India that to achieve good deeds in a developing nation, noble intentions are usually not as efficient as the natural forces of materialism, corporate self-interest and the market.

Last Friday, Pallam Raju, the minister of human resource development, hinted during a news conference that the government might review the project. But he played down the setback by saying, “Let’s not get obsessed with hardware.” He said it made more sense for the government to focus on improving Internet connectivity for the students instead of making machines they might not want.

It is a view that would elicit a sage nod from the executive chairman of Google, Eric E. Schmidt, who was in Delhi last week and appeared to be mildly baffled that only 20 million Indians out of 1.24 billion had broadband connectivity. He also said during his visit that a $50 Google-blessed smartphone was coming soon and that such a low-cost device had the power to transform Indian society, especially in education and medicine. If he is right, the smartphone will further erode the relevance of Aakash.

Mr. Raju, soon after igniting feverish speculation about the fate of Aakash, appeared to come under pressure from the government to make amends, because the project is expected to be one of the government’s trophies when it goes to the polls next year â€" if it lasts a full term. Days after he lighted the fire, Mr. Raju told journalists in the southern state of Kerala that the tablet project was in good health.

It is not the first time that the future of Aakash has been in the news. Last year, Narendra Modi, a probable prime ministerial candidate in the next elections and the chief tormentor of the governing Indian National Congress party, threw jibes at the government for the delays in delivering the celebrated device to students. Mr. Modi, a poet, played with the word “aakash,” which means sky in Hindi. He asked, referring to the delay in the tablet’s arrival on the market, why Aakash “has not come down to Earth.”

In response, the man who was then the human resources development minister, Kapil Sibal â€" who, too, is a poet â€" said that because Mr. Modi lived in “the netherworld,” he had to be shown the sky. And so, Mr. Sibal sent an Aakash tablet to Mr. Modi, who returned it.

Aakash has political significance not only because it is low-cost, but also because it is a computer, and the computer in India has long had a mythical quality to it. For millions, it promises transformation, a generational leap. It is a symbol of prestige much the way a pen in a shirt pocket was not long ago.

“E-governance” is a sweet nothing several politicians have mouthed even in states where there is no electricity to run computers for hours a day. This confused Bill Gates very much on one of his visits to India a few years ago. He said India had to focus on providing basic infrastructure before worshiping the computer, even if it ran on Windows. The image of a farmer in a turban doing something on a desktop as his happy family looks on is not an uncommon sight in government publicity material.

A few weeks ago, the chief minister of the northern state of Uttar Pradesh, which has a sub-Saharan quality of life, stood on a stage with his wife and gave free laptops to high school students, much in the manner of giving alms. He has promised to give away more.

The combination of extreme poverty and the worship of digital technology in India has, over the last decade or so, inspired an industry of local and foreign nonprofit organizations that are sold on the idea that India can become a center of cheap innovation that can transform the developing world. Aakash is, in a way, the consequence of this belief, which has taken hold here.

The efforts of many of these organizations, like the quests for a low-cost computer and voice-based translation software, were honest and spirited projects, but nothing viable came of them. When India eventually made the world’s lowest-priced car, it was through purely commercial enterprise. The car, the Tata Nano, like Aakash, faced several problems, and despite the hype surrounding its introduction, it was not a hit in India. But the force of corporate self-interest sustained it through the difficult years, and the car is now beginning to redeem itself.

The most profound changes in modern Indian society have come not of good intentions, but through market forces, like the steep fall in the price of mobile handsets and call rates. It is in this way that greed is good.

Manu Joseph is editor of the Indian newsweekly Open and author of the novel “The Illicit Happiness of Other People.”

A version of this article appeared in print on March 28, 2013, in The International Herald Tribune.