In order to fight corruption and eliminate middlemen, the Union Cabinet Minister for HRD, Communications and IT, Mr Kapil Sibal, said that the Unique Identification Authority of India's Aadhaar and the Aakash tablet could be used together.
“Aakash and Aadhaar can be used to resolve many of the issues. Apart from a law, we need an ecosystem to reduce the possibilities of corruption,” he said while delivering a speech at the India Semiconductor Association's Vision Summit.
He said the Centre was asking States to indicate the services that could be delivered publicly and said that the deadline was five years, which meant that all services would be available across the country within this time.
“Can a country wait for 10-20 years for the brick and mortar to be developed to deliver services like healthcare and education?” he asked.
While the Aakash cost around Rs 2,276 to manufacture today, Mr Sibal said that this would be reduced to around Rs 1,500 in the future as volumes picked up. Of this, 50 per cent would be subsidised by the Government, while the remaining would be subsidised by the educational institution, thereby ensuring that it was given free to around 220 million students in the country.
Talking about electronic systems design and manufacturing (ESDM), Mr Sibal said the country needed a strong policy because if it didn't get one, it would be forced to import $300-billion worth of electronics by 2020, which is higher than the imports on crude oil.
“ESDM is also a meta resource and is used by auto, Defence, aviation and other industries, and accounts for 30 per cent of the bill of materials of electronic goods,” he said.
Electronics development
In order to encourage electronics in the country, Mr Sibal said that the Government wanted to setup semiconductor wafer fabs, give preferential market access to local players without flouting WTO norms, and setup electronic manufacturing clusters.