IDG News Service - BANGALORE -- India is developing a laptop to be sold at $10 that will target higher education applications, a minister of the federal government said today in Delhi.

Research on the new low-cost laptop is being carried out at the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore and the Indian Institute of Technology in Chennai, said D. Purandeswari, minister of State for Higher Education, at a conference in Delhi. This measure will help raise the quality of higher education in India, she added.

The minister did not give the specifications of the $10 laptop, nor is it clear if the rock-bottom price will be achieved with the help of a government subsidy.

The Indian government is planning to use information and communications technology (ICT) to strengthen its current programs for distance learning by making them accessible online, Purandeswari said.

As part of this new "National Mission in Education through ICT," the government is also working on developing a low-cost and low-power access device, according to Purandeswari. The government also plans to make available free bandwidth for education purposes to every Indian. It plans to use this bandwidth to build a "knowledge network" among the nation's institutions of higher learning.

India's Internet penetration is currently low. The country had 4.38 million broadband subscribers at the end of June for a population of more than 1.13 billion.

A number of local and multinational companies, such as Microsoft Corp. and Intel Corp., as well as nongovernmental organizations have been working on technology for education.

India did not sign up for the One Laptop Per Child program after officials in the education ministry decided that giving a computer to every child is "pedagogically suspect," and may be detrimental to the growth of the creative and analytical abilities of the child. An Indian telecommunications service provider, Reliance Communications, has, however, been doing pilots of the OLPC in India since last year.

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