Tablet racket
The Lokayukta, taking cognizance of the tablet scam barely weeks before he himself laid down office, probably underlines the enormity and seriousness of the allegations made by IT professionals against the InfoTech Corporation of Goa in the purchase of tablets to be supplied to students under the Goa Cyberage Scheme. Incidentally, it is not only the former director of the InfoTech Corporation and two other computer suppliers who made the allegations, but an anonymous individual, who wrote to the Lokayukta.
The Infotech Corporation chairman’s subsequent press conference was not convincing enough over the rigging of tenders for the procurement of the tablets. The chairman was unable to explain why the Goa government was unable to order the tablets, laptops and computers directly from the company at a huge discount, since all taxes and commissions would have been eliminated. It appears that the idea of placing orders with a handful of favoured vendors was only to benefit them.
The rigging of tenders, favouritism shown to certain vendors and the sharing of information among bidders and vendors seems to be evident to any observer from the fact that the difference between the tender bids was Re 1 and in other places staggered in multiples of Rs 100. The Infotech chairman was unable to explain why NCERT and other educational content which is freely available on the net was supplied by the vendors with costs attached. In fact the chairman rationalized that one of the factors why the price of tablets supplied by vendors was Rs 9500, which is high compared to market prices, was due to the e-content. He also went on to add an amusing rationalization that ‘free content was not good’, besides making other gaffes..
To compound his ignorance on the subject, the Infotech chairman said, “Linux is an operating system available free of cost and yet over 90 per cent of PCs in the world use Windows which comes at a substantial cost.” When tech nerds are working overtime to break the monopoly of software corporations to make content free and create an equitable knowledge society, the chairman seems to be justifying crony capitalism.
Earlier, it was reported that HP had approached the Goa government to supply its computers directly on a no profit basis by covering the basic production costs. The only condition was that they would not pay a single bribe at any level. Needless to say, the Goa government did not accept the HP bid.
IT professionals and the former director of Infotech Corporation calculate that the state could have saved Rs 20 crore by placing orders directly with the companies. It is perplexing why the incumbent government insisted on incurring losses for which people have to pay through crushing taxes which are insidiously being imposed every now and again. Despite the huge dent in government revenues in the wake of the stoppage of mining operations, why is the government unable to throw off the yoke of playing favourites with certain vendors? Why can’t it save money by negotiating directly with the tablet companies? This is the big question predominant in peoples’ minds. Unless the Chief Minister orders a probe into the scam in the absence of the Lokayukta, the people will feel even more disillusioned with the seriously deteriorating level of governance.
Despite the huge dent in government revenues in the wake of the stoppage of mining operations, why is the government unable to throw off the yoke of playing favourites with certain vendors?
