We also (although perhaps that is a discussion for a different forum, yet it has its echo right here, because of the content question) need to understand whether the government is being ridden on for a parochial purpose. 

As it is presently constructed, Aakash seems very unsuitable for higher education. This may seem an extreme view, but I think we have no reason to accept the present quality of higher education as acceptable, for our country, for our children. This debate is already taking place at the level of such celebrity techies as Infosys' emeritus chairman, Narayana Murthy, who has voiced his concern about the premier IITS and IIMs (or maybe he restricted himself to IITs, and it hardly takes much to open one's eyes to the fact that the IITs are not and cannot be the end-all and be-all of higher learning in India). Will this device contribute to raising the bar at our institutes of higher learning? I don't think so.

It might be useful as a supplement for secondary education, but even there, its low battery life is worrying. The possibility of recharging regularly, or of providing widely distributed electricity to keep the device working during the normal school day, is simply a pipe dream for the foreseeable future. I am not so concerned about the lack of support for Android Market, provided an alternate channel for maintaining and upgrading the device is created and made available in a meaningful manner. There is no information about any such infrastructure. Tacky construction will have disastrous results for devices placed in the hands of playful schoolchildren. And as of yet, there is no framework of pedagogy to use the device. Who will help implement such a pedagogy when it is developed? Schoolteachers who have not yet put their hands on their first working personal computers?

Also, MoHRD does not have a remit to bring a device like this to secondary schools. As such, it falls between two stools. 

Does the Ministry have good reason to believe that neither private industry nor any collective of techies is gearing to make an affordable and meaningful device possible? If so, I would like to know their source of information. I am aware of several such projects taking place worldwide in the non-private sector, and from the private sector, creating niche products for every conceivable segment seems to be happening almost continuously, or at any rate, at a bewildering speed.