Not India's minister of state for higher education, who dropped a teeny-tiny reference to India's plans to develop a cheap laptop into a Tuesday speech , according to a transcript by the country's Ministry of Human Resource Development:

"The Indian Government would also offer assistance to 1,000 polytechnic institutes; 300 in public-private partnership mode and 400 in the private sector, besides taking care of the infrastructure and faculty shortages," said Smt. D. Purandeswari, in the speech. "Further, to enable students make most out of the advanced technology; the Government also aims to provide 100 dollar laptops to students. Research in this direction is being already carried out at the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore and the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Madras. These steps will substantially take care of the quality of higher education, which, as I have mentioned earlier is an essential desideratum of economic growth."

So far, there's no indication on whether or not the laptop would be subsidized, or just manufactured cheaply enough to reach the $100 price point. In the link above, Gartner seems to believe that the $100 price tag is a distraction from solving more fundamental problems, such as the cost of packaging and assembly. The smart money says that this project will quietly disappear; on the other hand, Indian car company Tata -- which seeks to manufacture the cheapest car in the world -- would probably take that bet.