Logged out? Students rue govt’s silence on free laptops

CHENNAI: With the State government failing to give any concrete response, even in Assembly, on whether the free laptop scheme for students — a pet project introduced by the late and former chief minister Jayalalithaa — will be continued or not, the likely student beneficiaries are a dismayed lot. While the MK Stalin government announced free tablet computers to government school students studying classes 6th to 8th, no GO has been issued to this effect also, they rue.

The scheme

The free laptop scheme was launched by Jayalalithaa in 2011 to cover all Class 11 and 12 students in government schools. The objective of this scheme was to make the students conversant with the latest technological updates in Information Technology and to enable them to successfully compete in the computer-oriented competitive employment market.

Accordingly, the scheme was extended to the students who studied in government and government-aided arts and science colleges, engineering colleges and polytechnic institutions.

The laptops distributed are provided with a dual boot facility offering both Windows 10 Pro National Academic Edition and BOSS/ Linux from the Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (CDAC).

Under the scheme, 51.67 lakh laptop computers have been distributed free of cost to students at Rs 7,257.61 crore between 2011-12 and 2019-2020 (till February).

The previous AIADMK government had announced that the free laptop scheme will be continued during 2020-2021 and it was proposed to distribute laptops to five lakh students at an allocation of Rs 949.30 crore. However, due to the pandemic situation from March 2020, the distribution of laptops could not be done as per the schedule.

As it was expected that the scheme would continue even after DMK took over power, the present state government in September 2021, announced that the government was taking measures to distribute the free laptop computers to students at the beginning of the next academic year. But, till now international tender to procure laptops was not floated despite enrolling the students, who would be getting free laptops.

How laptops helped

A senior government teacher in a government school in the city, seeking anonymity, said distribution of laptops to students during the schooling years facilitates the students to prepare for various competitive examinations and also optimizes the learning outcomes in the context of the revised textbooks which contain QR codes link to audiovisual content, question banks and hi-tech labs.

“The laptop given by the government when I was doing Class 12 was very useful. Even in college, I am using it for study purposes. It was very helpful, especially during the project presentation,” said M Gopinath, a third-year college student in the city.

Another senior teacher with a Higher Secondary School said the laptop was very useful during the lockdown period as several government schools could conduct online classes for the students on par with the private institutions.

“Online communication was possible with the laptops where students engaged in communicating with the teachers regularly,” he added.

Tabs vs laptops

There was also a plan by the current government to provide free tablets instead of laptops. However, no government order has been issued in this regard to date.

Meanwhile, experts opine that tabs might not be of much use compared to laptops. Students who received free laptops in 2019-2020 are utilizing them even after their graduation, they point out.

Listing the disadvantages of the tablets, K Hariharan, a computer technician in Chennai said tablets’ hardware is prone to damage and it also has weaker capabilities. “Always traditional keyboards, seen by the students will be much more comfortable,” he said adding “screen will be small in the tablets compared to the laptops”.

The technician also claimed that the tablets do not come with optical drives for use with DVDs.