Steve Jobs, in the ‘Aakash’

Steve Jobs died within hours of India on Thursday launching the world’s cheapest tablet computer 'Aakash'.

Steve Jobs, the man who changed the way the world looks at personal electronic gadgetry, died within hours of India on Thursday launching the world’s cheapest tablet computer.

The Indian tablet is called ‘Aakash,’ or ‘sky’, and the government aims to sell it to students for 1,750 Indian rupees (INR) or $35. It is wi-fi enabled, possesses up to 32 GB in storage space and has two USB ports. Datawind, the Canadian company, which helped launch the product, said it will soon sell off-the-shelf at INR2,999 or $61.

Now compare that with Steve Jobs’ former company, Apple, which already owns 60 per cent of India’s tablet market, with Samsung following at 25 per cent. The Apple 2 ipad, with 32 GB in storage, costs a hefty INR46,000, just under $1,000 in a falling rupee market.

Kapil Sibal, India’s minister for telecom and science and technology, taking a break from the several financial scandals that have recently rocked the country, was understandably ecstatic.

“The poor and ordinary have been excluded (from the tablet revolution). Aakash will end that digital divide,” Sibal said. He said the government hoped the ‘Aakash’ could be used as a mass tool to expand the spread of education across the country.

For me, Jobs’ death feels like a personal loss, not only because my iphone has revolutionised my life or because I’m within striking distance of the age that he’d clocked when he died, but because Jobs’ passion for his work, his transformational vision and his attention to detail is like a ready-made model for South Asia.

Consider the following: As many as 850 million people (out of its 1.2 billion population) already use mobile phones in India, second only to China. Compare this with the only 80-100 million people who use the Internet. Leveraging the profit motive to expand benefits into new frontiers, such as by the ‘Aakash’ tablet, can be a win-win situation.

Now imagine if ‘Aakash’ were to be available across South Asia. Of course, for that to happen, India and Pakistan would have to begin to treat each other like normal people, and therefore, normal nations. One example of their tasteless, not-to-mention pre-historic, decision has been to stop mobile phone signals in each other’s countries. But guess what? Even pedantic politicians and rude bureaucrats can’t do that to your internet-enabled gadgets, such as the Blackberry or the iphone. The ‘Aakash’ would, similarly, escape would-be snoopers.

But if Datawind and the Indian government decided to think out of the box, it could offer the ‘Aakash’ across the Saarc space, from Kabul to Kathmandu to Cox’s Bazaar, for the same price it is being launched in India. The much larger South Asian market would easily compensate for hardware costs. Really, it’s a no-brainer.

Indian Prime Minister, Manmohan Singh probably inherited his economic instinct from his Sikh businessmen forebears who made their living travelling the Peshawar-Kabul route selling their wares, even if anthropologists insist there is no such thing as inherited skill. That’s from where you get the line ‘breakfast in Delhi, lunch in Lahore and dinner in Kabul’; which Afghan President Hamid Karzai, was happy to copy in an address, earlier this week in the Indian capital.

From Apple to ‘Aakash’, we already know that imitation is the best form of flattery. Steve Jobs, 1955-2011, rest in peace.

Published in The Express Tribune, October 10^th, 2011.