OLPC update: India isn't buying
It's not like we expected every developing country in the world to jump at the chance to blow $100 million on the minimum order of Negroponte's pull-string powered laptops, but India sure did seem a logical fit. With their burgeoning tech economy, it would seem training a new generation of tech support personnel engineers and programmers would be a priority well met by the OLPC, but the Indian Ministry of Education busted out the vocab and called the laptop "pedagogically suspect." They seemed to think the funds were better suited for building classrooms and hiring teachers, not "fancy tools," and their reasoning is hard to fault in that regard. Education Secretary Sudeep Banerjee also questioned the maturity of Negroponte's plan, and said no major country was seriously interested. Of course, Nigeria just ordered up a cool million, and places like China, Brazil, Argentina, Egypt and Thailand are still likely targets, but it looks like India is content to wait on the sidelines and call sour grapes for now.
