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UP deal: Biggest initiative to bridge digital divide, says HP

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Abhigna
New Update

NEW DELHI, INDIA: When Samajwadi Party, once known for its hatred towards computers, came to power in Uttar Pradesh, nobody would have thought it's supremo Mulayam Singh's son Akhilesh Yadav would literally empower youth with PC.

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In its ambitious ICT-driven project, the UP government aims to equip 1.5 million students with HP Pavilion G4 notebooks by September 2013.

Hewlett-Packard (HP) believes that UP deal is the world's largest effort to facilitate e-literacy. The project, bagged by HP in international competitive bidding, envisages to provide notebook PCs to students enrolling for higher education across 313 tehsils. At a time when India has just 5 per cent PC penetration, this Rs 2,800 crore worth initiative is apparently in tandem with Center's mega e-literacy push.

Speaking to CIOL, PPSG senior director at HP India Vinay Awasthi said that government spends huge amount of money on education, and he also feels that there would be lot more productivity when a tangible product is being provided to students. "India is way behind in digital literacy as compared to any many countries, even though we are considered an IT hub," he added.

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As the Union government, Awasthi said, is talking about inclusive growth led by online banking initiatives, PDS distribution and the delivery of public services, the citizens, going forward, have to become computer savvy in order to perform online transactions and avail digital services.

"There is tremendous success in Tamil Nadu. They won't repeat it if there was no success. UP deal is the world's largest initiative to bridge digital divide. We need to applaud the government for this initiative. I don't see if any other project gives access to laptop so fast," the HP executive opined.

The personal systems major has received LoI on Feb 15 to supply 1.5 million notebook PCs. It's required to supply 5 per cent of the ordered quantity within two months, and 25 per cent of it in 91-120 days, spanning overall procurement in seven months. The company is also setting up call center for service support in Lucknow and service centers across all 313 locations.

As part of the contract, HP will supply the HP Pavilion G4 notebooks, with a 14-inch display, 2 GB of internal memory, 500 GB hard disk capacity, webcam, Bluetooth and Wi-Fi support.

The devices will run the Windows 7 platform with MS Office Pro Academic Version 2010 and have option of UBUNTU LINUX as well, in dual boot mode. It supports Hindi, English and Urdu languages.