According to a news from Yahoo (Via Engadget) it looks like IISC and IIT Chennai are working together to make a $10 Laptop. How is this even going to be possible? My guess are:
1. By Manufacturing all the components for the laptop in one place in India, it will help reduce all the excise duty costs and since this looks like an effort involving Govt., The Govt. would fund the initial Fixed costs involved in setting up the plant (Read: Tax Payer’s money).
2. Govt. could subsidize the cost of the laptop even if it means that the components have to be imported, again prying the hands into the Tax Payer’s money.
3. It is a well known fact that our Finance Minister P.Chidambaram is good at inventing new ways of taxing the people, so he might introduce a new $10 laptop tax for every regular laptop/desktop sold in India and thereby funding the efforts of $10 laptop.
Ultimately the Citizens are going to end up paying for this effort in the form of a tax if any of the above 3 is followed. I will be more than willing to do so, if this effort is carried out in the cleanest way possible minimizing corruption and making the $10 laptop reachable to the students who need it.
If it is still going to be made for $10 without involving the Govt. Subsidy or Taxes in any form then I have to bow down and pay respect to whoever doing this.
Update: It looks like the price is going to be $100. $100 should be possible without subsidies I guess (Read OLPC). Oh well, All my guesses for nothing!
