The Truth about $35 Android Tablet from Indian Government
androidos.in
androidos.in
It's the same thing in Europe or the USA: nationalistic pride results in more expensive products, and people complain why they aren't cheaper. If instead they are cheaper but produced abroad they complain why they were not made in our home country, and why are we giving money to foreigners.
If the Indian government found that the only way to get a 35$ tablet was from a chinese company, kudos to them to do what's best for their society. A cheap tablet will be a lot more useful than the damage it will bring to Indian pride.
As everyone on here knows, like OLPC, it would end up actually costing more than and doing less than a commercially produced model - like every other government initiative.
It seems that in this case they simply got caught cheating.
Another good example would be try posting for a freelance dev job in any job boards and watch the frivolous offers trickle down without anyone even reading what the requirements of the jobs are.
I wonder if this is a cultural thing.
Also for some blind patriotism read the comments on this blog post.
PS. Before anyone starts bashing me for generalizing. I am from that region, and have quite a few first hand experience.
But, making an overall generalization for "all" Indians is a bit hurtful, personally. There is no denying about the job boards things, but that generalization is not true, atleast from my personal experience of college life at BITS, Pilani and interaction with students from IIT's.
Indeed they could even purchase the dies for the case and actually manufacture the whole thing in India. Would the lack of Indian case design make it not Indian? Not quite a smoking gun.
What one needs is a powerful Indian media company to ask for an example to look at and a trip to the factory.
All the parts, in fact!