President Pranab Mukherjee Launched Low Cost Aakash Tablet 2

The Indian President Pranab Mukherjee on 11 November 2012 in New Delhi launched the new tablet Aakash -2 which is an improved version of India's super- cheap tablet computer on the occasion of the National Education Day which is observed on 11 November 2012 ever year.

The new version Aakash 2 come at a price of 1130 Rupees for students, and the first one lakh devices is going to be made available to students of engineering colleges and universities.

Preceding its previous version it is now powered by a processor running at 1 GHz, 512 MB Ram, 7 Inch capacitative Touch Screen and battery which have atleast three hour of working operation.

The new Aakash-2 Tablet was developed under the expertise guidance of IIT Bombay with the active support of C-DAC.

The company that is rolling out the new Aakash 2 is Datawind and is selling it to government at a price of 2263 Rupees and In turn, the government is subsidizing it by 50 per cent and is going to distribute to students at a price of mere 1130 rupees.

The Union Government is also extending its effort to encourage the state governments to chip in by subsidising it further so that the device can eventually be available to students free of cost.

It is expected that around 22 crore students are going to get the device across the country in the next five to six years.

Some of the new technology-enabled educational applications that can run on Aakash Version 2.0 tablet include
• Ten Thousand Teachers Training Programme - a live video interaction with participants,
• Clicker applications for real time feedback in country-wide classroom,
• Daisy Books for differently-abled students,
• NCERT content , GNU Khata- an accounting package for barefoot accountants in rural areas
• Scholarship Portal integrated with Aadhar.

The basic idea behind launching of cheap Aakash Tablet 2 is to achieve overall growth and development by understanding the importance of enhancing educational participation by all sections of our society.