We are famous for our bargaining skills and well here’s a sample =)! The OLPC – One Laptop Per Child, which promises a fully functional educational laptop for the price tag of $100 has been rejected by the Indian HRD Ministry, who think they can bring the price down for the same to $10.

http://www.tgdaily.com/content/view/31906/118/

Now, I do not know this with absolute confidence, but here’s what I think happened…

[Begin Scene]

Earlier that morning.

Indian HRD person in the fish market: How much does that cost me?
Fisherwoman [not generalizing… hehe ok I am generalizing here :P]: That’s 50 Rupees
IHRD Person: What? 50 Rupees, this is daylight robbery. I am not going to give you more than 5 Rupees, although I know that it would have cost you a total of at least 20 Rupees to get the fish till here.
Fisherwoman: Amazing choice of fresh expletives and a slap
IHRD Person: Ok, that’s good. I will catch my own fish. [Moves on the vegetable section.]

Situation replace with vegetable vendor.

Rinse.

Repeat.

Later that day

OLPC Rep: Hello Sir. We have this awesome initiative where in we offer each laptop for $100. Think about the pervasion of Information Technology in India. It’s just $100 per laptop, which is 1/10th or at least 1/7th the price of a decently configured laptop from other vendors, which does a similar job
IHRD Person: I will give $10 for it… We already know that manufacturing costs are down to $47

[End Scene]

We actually are amazing @ bargaining. There’s nothing wrong with that either. =D! However, seriously $10, when we know that it’s not the actual value of the laptop that we should be considering but more along the lines of how fast it reaches our people.Anyhoo, we have another 2 years to get everything working now don’t we?

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