Brushing aside allegations by Massachusetts Institute of Technology that it withdrew from a research project in India due to differences with him, Information and Technology Minister Arun Shourie said on Friday that the US-based institute failed to add value to the project, which was designed to benefit the Indian masses.
"The agreement with MIT which lapsed on March 31 was not renewed, not because I am not interested in rural development but because researcher in five IITs to whom funds had been given for the project said, 'we can't tell what contribution came about from MIT'," Shourie said reacting to allegations by MIT that he did not believe in rural development through IT.
Terming the allegations made by MIT Media Lab chairman Nicholas P Negroponte as "strange", Shourie said, "I don't want the relationship to end unhappily so I don't want to react on the sort of phrases that Negroponte has used. That was not the tenor of talks when he came to see me with Prof Pentland."
The project -- 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.
Asked if he saw Media Lab's withdrawal as a major loss to the project, Shourie answered in the negative.
A lot of money was being spent by the Indian government even when the work was being done by IIT professors, Shourie said, adding that the IITs did not want an exclusive tie-up with any agency.
"There should be a choice. This kind of considerations led to a revamp of the project," Shourie said.
Hitting out at MIT, Shourie said that at one point they had promised that due to association of great names (with the project), lot of private funds would come but "private entrepreneurs who were on the board of MLA had also not contributed anything. So in the end it was completely a government-funded project."
About the meagre MIT cooperation to the project, Shourie said, "One of them (IIT professors) said there had been only two e-mail messages in the whole year and twice they (MIT professors) came to give lectures."
"Such was the extent of value addition by MIT."
The minister said there was a demand of payment of five million dollars of government money just for using the word 'Media Lab Asia', and added, "I certainly did not see why it must be done."
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