May 31, 2001

   Government today cleared the setting up of Media Lab Asia in India with a first year financial commitment of Rs. 65 Crores. This is a major initiative for developing and deployment of the latest technologies of digital era in the service of common man. This will thus complement India’s initiatives in the IT software and services export front and open up new opportunities for the Indian ICT (Information and Communication Technology) industry as well.

    The idea of setting up Media Lab Asia emerged during the visit of an I.T.Delegation led by Sh.Pramod Mahajan, Minister for Information Technology and Parliamentary Affairs. to USA in June 2000. Other Asian countries also were competing for setting up this Lab. The Lab in India would address issues of interest in Asia. Like the MIT Media Lab, Media Lab Asia will also work on the consortia model where each sponsor’s financial contribution is leveraged to develop technologies and shared Intellectual Property

    The Media Lab Asia is being established jointly by Government of India and the world renowned Massachusetts Institute of Technology Media Lab USA to harness the benefits of the latest and future technologies for the benefit of the common man. The Media Lab Asia is a Rs.5127.50 crores project over a period of 10 years with most of this money i.e. more than 80% coming from industry and other sponsors. The Government assistance is in the nature of seed funding and would be less than 20% of the total budget of the Media Lab Asia over the project period. The underlying goal is to develop the Media Lab Asia as a self sustainable model to develop technologies which have relevance in every day life using latest and future technologies. The special emphasis of Media Lab Asia will be to deliver the benefits of I.C.T to the rural masses. The project will start with a one year exploratory phase and will be continued further based on the assessment of the exploratory phase.

    The Media Lab Asia represents meeting of the vision and minds of MIT USA, Government of India and Indian people. The MIT Media Lab has established itself as a renowned organization to develop technologies which go beyond the strict disciplinary boundaries. The MIT Media Lab has excelled itself in working with a broad spectrum innovative and new technologies like Electronic paper, 3 dimensional printing, intelligent class rooms, wearable computers, quantum computing etc. involving human requirements in all their complexity in the design and development of all these technologies and products. The MIT Media Lab works in interdisciplinary areas in a counter-intuitive, risk taking and free wheeling spirit. The MIT Media Lab works in a self sustainable manner with 90% of their budget coming from more than 170 worldwide industry and other sponsors.

    The Office of the Media Lab Asia is planned to be located in the Mumbai Pune belt.

    The role of the Media Lab Asia is to facilitate invention, refinement, and deployment of innovations that benefit the masses. The Media Lab Asia would work with industry, NGOs, government, and most importantly ordinary people, to bring these innovations to the rural areas. The key to success for the Media Lab Asia would be combining the creativity of Indian entrepreneurship with the technical know-how of seats of learning to grow sustainable, culturally appropriate solutions. Particular challenges include the need to operate in many different languages and the need to support product innovation using local culture and tradition.

    The Media Lab Asia would be based around village-level field projects, supported by research for technology development and partnership; the goal over the lifetime of the project is to have a sustainable presence in a large number of India’s villages for tackling the major challenges specially education, health, employment generation and entrepreneurship.

    Projects in rural villages would be supported by clusters of researchers. These activities are about a community of researchers working with rural villages and urban slum areas, and helping partner organizations deploy sustainable services such as healthcare, public health monitoring, one-room computer schoolhouses, public and postal services, micro-banking, handicraft trading, informal sector manufacturing, and public entertainment and communications.

    The Media Lab Asia is also expected to bring in a major enhancement in our education system. The research clusters would be associated with existing academic programs, adding hands-on project-based research components and specialized degree curricula. This would greatly enhance the practical orientation and skill development in the education system.

    Each project would serve as a focus for technical innovation, and serve as a research laboratory for sponsoring organizations. The motivation for industry would be to develop new products that serve the needs of people and develop new business lines having high growth.