India’s latest version of the low-cost tablet – Aakash 4 – isn’t failing to make headlines each passing day as the bidding date nears. Today it has been revealed that leading technology institutes in the country, which were entrusted with the task of testing each of the Aakash variants, won’t be getting the chance to do so for Aakash 4.
The reason? Well if you are not aware of the row between one of the IITs and DataWind – the supplier of initial versions of Aakash – we will recap here what happened. The IIT Jodhpur was given the task of devising a test plan and the parameters of testing Aakash tablets. They did come up with a plan only to upset DataWind because the latter claimed that the testing parameters were unacceptable.
The tussle between the two made it to the mainstream media and the testing task was transferred to IIT Bombay. Then somehow, the testing was handed over to IIT Rajasthan, which at that point in time wasn’t well equipped to carry out those tests. That didn’t go well either as the country’s CAG (Comptroller and Auditor General), which lambasted the HRD Ministry for the manner in which Aakash project was handled and awarded in the first place.
Owing to this mess, the IITs will not be in charge of any testing and instead the entire task has been entrusted to Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC). C-DAC will carry out the testing for Aakash 4 by adopting a two-stage methodology.
First stage will involve the pre-qualification test wherein the department will check whether the provided prototype is good enough and whether the vendor can be provided with authorisation to use the Aakash logo. In the second stage, sampling based testing will be carried out of randomly selected Aakash 4 samples. The certification from C-DAC will be valid for three years, subject to annual acceptance tests.
