New Delhi

The Indian government has approved a ten-year, $1.1-billion joint project with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) to set up Media Lab Asia, modelled on the highly successful Media Lab in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

The Indian facility will be MIT's second Media Lab outside the United States, following the establishment last year of Media Lab Europe in Dublin, Ireland.

Announcing the agreement on 31 May, Indian information-technology minister Pramod Mahajan said that MIT had chosen India after evaluating offers from several other Asian countries, including China and Singapore. A formal agreement between his ministry and MIT is expected to be signed this month.

Mahajan said the project would initially have a one-year “exploratory phase”, for which the Indian government has committed $14 million. Whether it continues for the next nine years will then depend on an end-of-year review.

If it continues, the government will provide 20% of the funding, with the rest expected to come from industry. Mahajan said the goal is to make the new laboratory self-sustainable, with income from the commercialization of its research findings.

Although conceptually similar to its cousins in the United States and Europe, Media Lab Asia will have a more decentralized structure, with offices in Mumbai, New Delhi and Bangalore. Mahajan says it will focus on technologies and products that are of specific value to Asia.

In particular, it will develop ideas for future global and domestic markets, and seek affordable solutions to problems of health education and rural development. One of its first tasks will be to identify academic partners to work with entrepreneurs on projects to benefit rural areas.