Khairat, a hamlet of brick and mud homes 80 km from Mumbai, is the first Indian base of Nicholas Negroponte’s worldwide One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) project. Since October, the 21 students of the Vastishala in Khairat have found a permanent companion in a dinky green-and-white laptop, the ‘XO’. Also called the “$100 laptop” — it actually costs close to $175— the XO is the low-cost tool that OLPC hopes will take computing into the developing world and its classrooms.

“The children don’t even watch TV any more, not even cable TV,” is the verdict of Malu Akhade (30). “They are always glued to their laptops, taking our photographs, recording each other’s voices as they sing and showing us pictures from all over the world.” Akhade can’t read or write but his younger son Rahul, in Class II, has mastered the English alphabet. Akhade has two children in the Vastishala. While Rahul is a master at responding to chat messages instantly — the XOs have longdistance wireless networking capabilities, even without an active Internet connection — Geeta (9) loves to gaze at pictures of the Tundra region and of desert shrubs, so unlike anything in the local geography.

“It doesn’t matter what subject I am teaching. If I see a use for the laptop, I immediately ask them to start up their machines,” says Sandip Surve (28), who busts every myth about bored teachers in mofussil government schools.

Surve was one of the reasons for picking Khairat, says Bhalchandra Joshi, who is heading the project from Reliance Communications, which is partnering with OLPC as a CSR initiative. “We roamed around and saw nearly 25 different villages and schools, from Talegaon to Vasai to Ambarnath,” says Joshi. Some civic and government schools were approached too, but the response was lukewarm.

“It had to be rural in the true sense but also somewhere that our engineers could reach quickly. Khairat fit our criteria perfectly. And Surve is so passionate about his job, the fact that he knows how to use computers makes it easier for us,” he adds. Also, at 30-odd km from the Navi Mumbai headquarters of the Reliance ADA Group, the location was ideal.

The school is a single room, a pucca structure for which the villagers shelled out some Rs 4,000 a couple of years back. A Mumbai-based philanthropist happened to see the incomplete structure and funded the rest. There is a steel cupboard and a steel bookshelf with glass doors. On the other side stands a steel table with drawers, on which the server-computer sits. There are three plastic chairs and an upturned steel drum to serve as a table for the teacher. The children sit on the floor — all four grades in the same classroom — on plastic mats. There are no desks.

Now, three months into the pilot project, the children play various games on ‘e-toys’, they play math and alphabet quizzes over chat with the teacher and they use a paint software to practise the Marathi alphabet. “They’ve also learnt that hitting the enter key while using the calci is a shortcut to getting the right answer,” winks Surve. “I’ve to be careful.” The ‘calci’ is the XO calculator, with all the tools a science student in degree college may need.

Suddenly, the schoolroom fills with shrieks of “L for la-yan (lion)”. It’s Mangal Jore (9), who’s just recorded her voice on the laptop. The others follow and 17 different recorded voices are hollering from the XOs’ little speakers. Along with its 1 GB flash memory, the XO also has USB and SD card slots, plus a built-in video camera.

Khairat itself is an unremarkable village, with just two or three families owning cultivable land. Other residents — from the Nomadic Tribes — mostly sell milk or walk four km to Chowk or Karjat to look for work on daily wages. Times are tough, but Khairat’s hardy residents are not insolvent. There are bank accounts maintained in Chowk, television sets in almost all homes, and a few dish antennae too. Every house has one mobile phone, at least. And now, almost each house has a laptop.

Needless to say, all eyes are on this pilot project. There have been some technical niggles though — the server was installed and so was Internet connectivity, all through a CSR participation by Reliance Communication, but the Net has not been working “for a while”. A telephone placed in the school for the Internet connection is dysfunctional too and a few of the laptops are reporting minor technical glitches.

The long-term success of the project will depend on how well the XO can be modified for the Indian classroom. Its commitment to open source software makes it an ideal instrument to modify. But Surve — he couldn’t clear his state-level computer skills exam, he admits — is currently the only person improvising with the XO. “A Marathi keyboard and fonts could do wonders,” he says, “since all subjects are taught in Marathi.”

Still, nothing is impossible for the children of Vasishala, Khairat, any longer. “At Chowpatty, other children began crying when they saw me taking pictures with my laptop,” says Mangal. She’s referring to a Mumbai visit organised by Reliance ADAG for the entire class and a few parents. “Even they don’t have these things.”

Mohan Jore, in his fifties and grandfather of Mangal and Haresh (7), adds: “This could help them do something — something big perhaps.”

OLPC Vision

• For two years now, the One Laptop Per Child initiative has been attempting to take computing into rural schools in the developing world

• Partnering their former colleague Nicholas Negroponte, several veterans of MIT’s Media Lab helped develop the XO laptop. Large US corporations pledged their support too, including Intel and AMD, both chip-making majors

• Intel, making its own low-cost laptop, resigned recently. The XO uses AMD’s cheaper chip

• Several countries pledged support too, vowing to buy one million pieces or more. But with cheaper options on the anvil, some countries are reconsidering

• The Indian government initially rejected the idea, with one secretary saying NGOs should concentrate on more urgent needs in the developing world

• OLPC is now campaigning for support through their Give One Get One programme, where people can buy one XO (it costs $175) at $400 and another one is shipped to one child in a developing country. Mongolia is among the first beneficiaries of the Give One Get One programme