At India scale they could design their own machines. Something like a ThinkPad X60 where the motherboard can attach a RPI Compute Module.
Recent specs were LENOVO E41-25 (81FS) with AMD A4 and 4GB memory. There are rumors that there will be an upgrade this year with HP manufacturing the laptop as Lenovo is barred from Govt. contracts in India.
It's to be noted that the said state has also made all educational content for schools distributed over free-to-air channels.
So a modular computer based out of RPi which can receive TV/Radio can technically cost lesser than the aforementioned full-fledged laptop. I've been brainstorming such a device with others on the thread mentioned on my parent comment.
I think Google is subsidizing entry level Chromebooks.
Of course usefulness of ChromeOS itself or the privacy implications is debatable and sadly full UEFI firmware replacement for this particular device isn't possible but there are lots of other chromebooks where we can run Linux/Windows or to some extent even macOS like regular PC.
But in my experience[1] browsing experience on an entry level Chromebook is miles ahead of any ARM based SBC mainly due to hardware acceleration mess.
[1] https://abishekmuthian.com/reviewing-the-chromebook-google-s...
I know this was a typo, but it feels like an unintentional portmanteau of "garbage" and "garage" which seems to fit particularly well. I hope you don't go back to edit this!
Also: Borrowing!
Thank you for considering the struggles of others while you yourself face it. I know a self made individual from Nepal like you in U.S. working in IT with green card and might be able to guide you. Contact me if you're looking for such help.
It's hard to visualize the digital divide in education induced due to the pandemic by someone who has easy access to compute, Internet and uninterrupted power supply.
[Trigger warning: Suicides]
Even middle class families in India spend more than 40% of their earnings on their children's education, So when the pandemic made education online, E-education startups with questionable practices became unicorns, their founders billionaires while children from marginalized, underrepresented communities quit their education forever in-favor of labor work.
There were numerous cases of children committing suicides because they couldn't afford a phone or because they broke the only phone shared with their siblings for education.
The hardware problem is not just because of accessibility, But also because of the lack of repairability. Many people came forward to donate their old phones, But it was often useless. Perhaps if OLPC had been successful things might have turned out differently, Maybe there's still a chance to build a OLPC using latest hardware like RPi 400. Then we need to solve the networking, Perhaps improving upon LoRAWAN could enable real time text messaging; I've been tracking this problem[1] on my platform since the start of the pandemic.
[1] https://needgap.com/problems/149-remote-education-for-underp...