Southern States - Tamil Nadu   

'Media Lab Asia' project, a non-starter

By R. K. Radhakrishnan

CHENNAI Nov. 11. The fate of the ambitious Media Lab Asia (MLA) programme, an Information Technology initiative which aims to reach out to the grassroots, seems uncertain, with no State Government coming forward with the Rs. 5-crore corpus contribution. Though the Union IT Secretary, R. R. Shah, requested Tamil Nadu to expedite the process of getting on board the project today, the IT department officials here told The Hindu, that Tamil Nadu was not interested. "We have our own projects running right now and we would not want to take up anything parallel to this. We began with a small pilot project near Madurai and now we are upscaling this,'' the official said. The project, Rural Access to Services through Internet, has now been extended to 10 districts.

A few in the Government sector said that since similar programmes existed in at least a few of the IT-savvy States, they might not support a parallel project, which had the potential to overrun their "babies.'' But the pro-MLA lobby hotly contested this view. They felt that the MLA was far superior in content, reach and scope and, hence, it was in the best interests of the States to support it. Moreover, the project had just commenced. They were optimistic and said it was only a matter of time before the States and premier institutes joined in. The MLA, says its website, is the "world's largest academic research programme, dedicated to bringing the benefits of new technologies to everyone, with a special focus on meeting the grand challenges in learning, health and economic development.'' The U.S.-based institute, MIT's Media Laboratory, is the lead player and the project has a $13-million seed funding from the Union Government.

"Finally, the question is what the deliverables are,'' says a senior official. "Tell the States and the others what you can do in three years. Then they will put their money in.''

But with research being a driving component of the project, the quantifiable returns cannot be given out beforehand, the reasoning goes. "Now, if that means States support something to provide U.S. scale salaries to officials without expecting anything in return, it is going to be difficult. I would rather support cheaper Indian projects.''

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