NEW DELHI: The HRD ministry has rejected the idea of 'one-laptop-per-child' (OLPC) being aggressively marketed by Nicholas Negroponte of MIT Media Laboratory. "India must not allow itself to be used for experimentation with children in this area," the ministry has said.

The ministry's detailed objection based on technical, social and financial grounds was sent to the Planning Commission two weeks ago.

Negroponte had made a presentation on OLPC at Yojna Bhavan on April 7 seeking to sell one million laptops at the rate of $100 per unit for children, the cost to be borne by the government.

The idea has enough takers in the Plan panel. And despite HRD's strong disapproval, Negroponte is coming to Delhi again on July 3 to hardsell his version of digital empowerment.

HRD contends that spending Rs 450 crore on digital empowerment can be better spent on primary and secondary education. "It is quite obvious that the financial expenditure to be made on the scheme will be out of public funds.

It would be impossible to justify an expenditure of this scale on a debatable scheme when public funds continue to be in inadequate supply for well-established needs listed in different policy documents," the ministry said.

It also finds it intriguing as to "why no developed country has been chosen" for MIT's OLPC experiment "given the fact that most of the developed world is far from universalising the possession and use of laptops among children of 6-12 age group".

The ministry says 6-12 is a highly "vulnerable age group to cover in an area of human technology interface which is so new and heavily debated".

"Both physical and psychological effects of children's intensive exposure to the computer implicit in OLPC are worrisome, to say the least.

Health problems of our rural children are well-known; personalised intensity of computer use could easily exacerbate some of these problems especially those related to eyesight and the back," the ministry said.

HRD also thinks there is a "conceptual vacuum in which the scheme is being propagated".

Arguing that the "implications of computer-based pedagogy for childhood have remained a grey zone of research", the ministry gives the example of the US where "the debate between those who believe computers to be good for children and those who have the opposite view has been quite polarised and shrill".