[icernet] MIT pulling out of Media Lab Asia project in India

[Arul Selvan]

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology Media Lab, known for its 
eclectic but cutting-edge technology research, has pulled out of a 
collaboration in India after less than two years, blaming a clash in 
styles with the country's new minister of Telecommunication.

Media Lab Asia was founded in 2001 to help develop technologies to 
benefit India's impoverished masses. The goal was to help transform one 
of the world's oldest cultures with affordable wireless and Internet 
technology that could offer everything from low-cost computers to online 
medical and matrimonial services.

But Walter Bender, the Media Lab's director in Cambridge said yesterday 
that MIT and the new Minister of Telecommunication Arun Shourie, 
disagreed about the direction of the project.

"The bottom line is that the minister wanted to run it like other 
programmes are run," Bender said. "That's not the way the Media Lab 
works. The Media Lab bets on people, not on products. Apparently, this 
is not the way they want it to operate." The initial arrangement called 
for the Indian government to provide 20 per cent of Media Lab Asia's 
funding, with corporate sponsors providing the rest.

Bender said lack of sponsorship wasn't a problem, saying it had reached 
the "multiple seven-digits." The two sides, however, didn't see 
eye-to-eye on the Media Lab's free-flowing, highly experimental research 
style.

"The Media Lab is a little unusual in that we try to advocate a 
bottom-up approach to doing research," he said. "That's not the norm, 
and apparently that's not what the minister wants to do going forward," 
he alleged.

Source:
http://www.outlookindia.com/pti_news.asp?id=140462