http://tehelka.com/story_main50.asp?filename=Ws101011MICROSOFT.asp#
The Tamil Nadu government is adding costly MS software to laptops meant for
poor students. It could cost Rs 10,200 Crore and hamper student growth
Sai Manish
New Delhi
TAMIL NADU Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa’s battery of freebie pronouncements
has spawned a mini freebie industry in the state with corporations, big and
small, rushing in to bag a slice of the scrumptious business on offer. But the
newest dole by the AIADMK government in the form of free laptops may become a
millstone around the necks of lakhs of students.
The Jaya government’s IT arm – the Electronics Corporation of Tamil Nadu
(ELCOT) – has taken out a tender for the supply of 9,12,000 laptops to be
delivered this year. Over the next five years, close to 7 million laptops
produced at a cost of over Rs 10,200 crore would be distributed. Jayalalithaa
has sent a memorandum to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh asking for central funds
to implement this scheme.
With so much at stake, the IT intelligentsia in India is accusing Microsoft of
using a mixture of American diplomatic offensive and its ‘embrace, extend and
extinguish’ strategy to make 7 million poor students of Tamil Nadu dependent on
its products with their free laptops.
ELCOT’s repeated changes in the tender have forced out free software and pushed
in Microsoft products, a move that in the words of former ELCOT MD C Umashankar
could ‘end up putting unproductive laptops with Windows in the hands of poor
students’. This would entrap them in Microsoft’s proprietary web of licences,
renewals, updates and upgrades.
There are allegations against ELCOT that it deliberately issued a second tender
favouring Microsoft by eliminating open source software from its list of
specifications and removing academically useful hardware from the laptop in a
bid to balance out the increased cost of using the Windows Operating system and
the licensed MS Office.
ELCOT advertised the first tender for the free distribution of over 9,12,000
laptops on June 4, 2011, after Jayalalithaa decided to implement another of her
election promises. ELCOT was working on keeping the base price of the laptop at
Rs 15,000 and, given the sheer scale of the order, the costs were expected to
come down to Rs 10,000 a laptop.
In June, ELCOT took out a tender with the following specifications: A dual boot
system that had free open source Linux with the proprietary Microsoft Windows
starter edition with antivirus software valid for a year. In addition, the
laptop also had to have 320 GB hard drive, 1.3 megapixel web camera, Wi-Fi
adapter and 8X DVD writer among other things.
At a time when ELCOT was looking to reduce costs, the bundling of Microsoft
Windows raised the price by Rs 5,000. Experts also point out that according to
Microsoft’s terms of licencing with Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs),
Windows always boots first irrespective of what a user wants when they start a
laptop.
Faced with a situation where it needed to cut costs and not offend one of the
world’s most profitable and powerful corporations, ELCOT took out a second
tender that stupefied the IT community in Tamil Nadu. In its new tender, ELCOT
asked bidders to provide only Microsoft Windows and removed Linux from the
list. ELCOT MD Atul Anand denies this though the tender documents clearly show
this. “We will retain dual boot laptops to ensure uniformity in the supply of
laptops by different vendors,” he said.
He refused to take more questions on why they needed dual boot software when
Kerala had set an example in the use of the free open source software through
its 2007 IT policy.
The Kerala programme, which is being heralded as the future of computing, aims
to make the state the leader in e-literacy driven largely by Linux, which
promotes the democratisation of it and brings it to every home.
ELCOT removed the free OS even though Linux’s Ubuntu operating system comes for
free and requires no updates, upgrades or expensive antivirus software to keep
the laptop in shape.
Ironically, ELCOT ’s own data centre at Taramani in Chennai uses IBM servers
and is powered by the free and open source Linux platform. But when it came to
students, it ditched the open source model for Microsoft.
What is more startling is that in 2007, under the DMK government, ELCOT, then
headed by a proactive and well-informed IAS officer C Umashankar, had shut the
doors on Microsoft by ordering the migration of all government departments,
panchayats and schools to Open Source Software after being convinced about its
cost benefits and massive collaborative potential.
Over 30,000 government and schoolteachers were to be trained in Linux.
Umashankar recounted how he was approached a couple of times by Microsoft
staffers who offered to sell the Windows OS for Rs 7,000 a computer. Umashankar
quoted a price of Rs 500 saying that for a mere Rs 300 he could not only get an
Operating System better than Windows but could also incorporate features like
DVD drives, webcams, multimedia editing software, vector map drawing
applications and hundreds of other academically helpful software.
"India will be able to survive without Microsoft. But Microsoft will not be
able to survive without India."
Umashankar said Rs 300 was just the media cost and he would not need to pay it
if the package was downloaded. Umashankar contended that MS Office did not
allow saving files in open format but it was always possible to open MS Office
files on an open source. This made the Windows OS and MS Office not only more
expensive but also inferior. Umashankar’s proposals massively upgraded the
systems and saved the Tamil Nadu government close to Rs 400 crore every year.
“India will be able to survive without Microsoft. But Microsoft will not be
able to survive without India. There is gross misconception among government
officials that if we shift to open source platform, then Microsoft would get
angry and the software industry would come to a halt”, Umashankar said, “This
is a completely misplaced fear.”
Even the special adviser to the Prime Minister, Sam Pitroda, believes that in a
scheme like this there is no scope for burdening students with stifling
software that would eventually become a liability for students. “I would
strongly recommend going in for open source software since it gives students
the capability to innovate, improvise and be creative. There is no difference
between using expensive proprietary software and open source platforms and
students who fear that their job prospects might be hurt because of using free
software are completely misplaced in their fears,” Pitroda told TEHELKA.
Umashankar’s words turned out to be prophetic when ELCOT took out a second
tender on August 20, 2011. Not only had ELCOT booted out open source by only
allowing Microsoft Windows OS on the systems, but it also removed vital
hardware to accommodate the high cost of the Windows OS . The new tender
removed the webcam and Wi-Fi adapter from the system while reducing the hard
disk capacity to half (160 GB as opposed to 320 GB in the June tender). So
ELCOT which wanted to reduce costs by about Rs 3000 on the base price of Rs
15,000 chose to dispose of hardware, which would benefit the students instead
of shaving off the costs by including free software with extra hardware.
Considering the growing penetration and relevance of internet in today's times,
without the Wi-Fi adapter, how beneficial is a laptop (defined as a personal
computer for mobile use) to students?
SO WHAT changed between June 4 and August 20 that led to Microsoft’s OS being
bundled into the laptop even though it meant higher costs and removing hardware
from the system, which is helpful to students?
Not only had ELCOT allowed only Microsoft Windows OS on the systems, but it
also removed vital hardware to accommodate the high cost of the Windows OS
Diplomatic observers point out to the stopover of US Secretary of State Hillary
Clinton in Chennai on July 20-21 when she met Jayalalithaa before flying out to
Indonesia on a state visit. “The proximity of the Clintons and the Gates is
well known to the world and needs no explanation. Hillary Clinton has often
endorsed Microsoft’s views on piracy and curtailing open source software to
protect Intellectual Property Rights (IPR). Microsoft employees alone
contributed close to $1,30,000 to Hillary’s presidential campaign while giving
just half that amount to Obama’s campaign. And the revelations of WikiLeaks
only show how the US has been forcing governments across the world to buy
expensive Microsoft licences,” says Peter Gabriel, an online free software
activist.
Two cables, one originating in the embassy at Hanoi and the other at the
embassy in Tunis, throw enough light on the scale and nature of the
government-corporation nexus in the United States and its influence on world
governments.
According to one of the cables, the US government ‘intervened’ to force
Vietnamese Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dzung to sign an agreement with Microsoft
CEO Steve Ballmer that would require Hanoi to pay Microsoft $20 million for 3
lakh licences. This even though the Vietnamese PM wanted to hold the Microsoft
deal as a deliverable till he met the US president later that year.
Now put that deal in an Indian context where 68 lakh licences would be required
under Jayalalithaa’s ambitious free laptop scheme and the business of diplomacy
becomes clear. The Microsoft deal of 3 lakh licences was dubbed in the cable as
‘the most significant agreement Vietnam has ever signed with a US business’.
Microsoft harped on IPR and the fact that Vietnam had the highest software
piracy rate in Asia. “The cost of running MS Office is extremely prohibitive.
That will only encourage students in Tamil Nadu to download pirated versions.
Its own policies will encourage piracy,” says Umashankar. Even Microsoft’s
corporate affairs director in Thailand had according to one cable ‘expressed
concern over the Thailand government’s policy of promoting open source software
model over the commercial source model as a means to curb piracy’.
Another indication of what Microsoft is up to in Tamil Nadu can be understood
from what the software giant did in Tunisia where only free software was being
used in the government since 2001, which prevented Microsoft from participating
in the Tunisian government’s tenders.
Microsoft, like its various charitable acts in India through the Bill and
Melinda Gates Foundation, also helped a charity for handicapped people run by
the wife of the Tunisian president, Ben Ali. The confidential cable notes,
‘Microsoft has agreed to provide training to handicapped Tunisians to enable
them to seek employment. The programme’s affiliation with Leila Ben Ali’s
charity is indicative of the backroom manoeuvring sometimes required to
finalise a deal. Microsoft’s reticence to fully disclose the details of the
agreement shows Tunisia’s emphasis on secrecy over transparency. Ultimately,
for Microsoft, the benefits outweigh the costs.’
Microsoft eventually bagged the contract to supply 12,000 licences to the
Tunisian government. It also made the Tunisian government change its tender
rules for IT equipment, and every subsequent tender now specifies that
equipment must be Microsoft-compatible, which until then had been prohibited by
Tunisia’s open software policy.
A similar scenario is unfolding in Tamil Nadu where despite a major shift to
open source software in 2007, the state is moving back to laptops for poor
rural students preloaded with Microsoft Windows.
Microsoft’s profitability from its Windows OS is also facing serious
competition from the emergence of smaller and faster devices according to a
report by it research firm Gartner Inc. The report says there is an increase in
demand for cell phones and tablets in the West as well as India.
Gartner’s research shows that Microsoft Windows was installed in just 3.8 per
cent of smart phones while Windows is not even counted much as an OS in the
tablet market. The dominance of Google’s Android with 43 per cent market share
in this growing segment has forced Microsoft to consolidate its most profitable
Windows OS and Office by continuing to dominate the laptop and desktop market.
"The cost of running MS Office is extremely prohibitive. That will only
encourage students in Tamil Nadu to download pirated versions"
A Microsoft spokesperson dodged most of the questions posed by TEHELKA to send
in the following response. “The tender specifies a “Windows Starter or higher”
version, so the implementing partners have the option to propose the most
suitable version of Windows 7. Windows 7 Starter itself is specifically
designed to cover all student essentials, such as using the internet, sending
email, and creating documents whilst harnessing the most successful Operating
System ever (today, more than 400 million Win7 licences have been sold
worldwide). The implementing partners can also bundle additional software, if
required, and the Windows Starter 7 (or higher version) supports standard
drivers for webcams and Wi-Fi devices. The Operating System licenses are
perpetual. If they want to, the students and educators will also be able to
take advantage of more than 3,50,000 open source applications that run on
Windows 7, as well as thousands of hardware devices.”
“I don’t know what is going on through the minds of my fellow officers at
ELCOT. I don’t think they have examined the pros and cons of the system they
will deliver to the poor student. After one year, the performance of a Windows
laptop goes down drastically. Using Windows would greatly hamper the
productivity of the student using it and the machine would become useless
within two years. This is a step backwards for Tamil Nadu. They thought since
it is the tax payer’s money, it doesn’t matter what kind of laptop is given.
Would anyone have bought a laptop for their personal use without vital hardware
at an enhanced cost?” says Umashankar.
Bengaluru-based software analyst Niranjan Bhargava says: “An inbuilt webcam
would have helped poor students get access to qualitatively superior training
from India’s centres of academic excellence, which are primarily concentrated
in a few areas. A laptop without wireless capability is outdated. It is going
back in time when we should be looking at leapfrogging broadband to improve
wifi connectivity.”
Sai Manish is a Correspondent with Tehelka.
[email protected]
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Streets and Their side walks are the main public places of a city; they are its
most vital organs. Think of the city and what comes to the mind? Its streets –
Jane Jacobs, 1961.
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