A $10 laptop is to go on display in Tirupati on Tuesday at the launch of the National Mission Education through Information and Communication Technology.

Students at the Vellore Institute of Technology and scientists from the Indian Institute of Science and Indian Institute of Technology Madras (IIT) have been working on the project for three years.

The prototype marks a major improvement on the $100 laptops designed by Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) founder Nicholas Negroponte. Negroponte’s "One Laptop Per Child"  project has taken a beating in the last few months as the slowdown has deeply affected production, price and staff cuts.

The higher education secretary, RP Agarwal said, "At this stage, the price is working out to be $20 but with mass production it is bound to come down”.

During the launch, ICT technologies like e-classroom , virtual laboratory and an improved Sakshat education portal were launched. The ministry has reportedly signed up four publishers - Macmillan, Tata McGraw Hill, Prentice-Hall and Vikas Publishing - to upload textbooks onto Sakshat. Only five per cent of these text books will be available free. X