The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) may have quit but Media Lab Asia is back. Tomorrow the Cabinet will decide on setting up a steering committee to run the re-incarnated Media Lab Asia.It will also decide on funding the lab with Rs 262 crore. However, unlike its previous avtaar, the lab will have government playing the key decision-maker. And involvement of MIT’s Media Lab will be limited to a mere exclusive tie-up—not day-to-day management.This time, the HRD Ministry, too, will have a role in the lab’s functioning as the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) are expected to be the prime movers behind research.The steering committee will be headed by the Information Technology Minister with the HRD Minister as its member. Other officials will be Secretary, Infotech and Advisor, Infotech.However, this time there will be no fancy salaries and not a single board member would be from the private sector.The rationale given for rejuvenating the outfit without MIT is that the latter had failed to provide a clear direction or a substantial foray. Neither did it commit any money or help raise funds from the corporates.To top that, most of the projects in the previous outfit were being executed by IITs with funding exclusively from the government. MIT had said that it withdrew from MLA due to differences with IT Minister Arun Shourie but the latter claimed that the government refused to renew the agreement in March since it failed to add value to the project, which was designed to benefit the masses.Cabinet approval is necessary to take the project forward since the pilot phase has expired. The project was cleared by the government for a one-year pilot phase in June 2001 with a financial support of Rs 65 crore of which Rs 15 crore has been utilised so far. The pilot phase was, however, extended till December 2002.Media Lab Asia was founded in 2001 to develop technologies to help transform the economically weaker sections of the society with affordable wireless and Internet technology.
