There’s a big scramble for Common Service Centre pie

 

NEW DELHI: Information technology hardware majors and even large corporate houses are making a beeline to grab a piece of the Common Service Centre (CSC) pie.

 

Companies as diverse as Godrej, IFFCO, Reliance Agri Business, HCL, Hughes and Airtel have been making financial and technical bids to set up, manage and operate CSCs in various states, according to Aruna Sundararajan, CEO, CSC project.

 

The CSC scheme envisions CSCs as the front-end delivery points for government, private and social sector services to rural citizens, in an integrated manner. The objective is to develop a platform that can enable government, private and social sector organisations to align their social and commercial goals for the benefit of the rural population through a combination of IT-based and non-IT-based services.

 

The basic e-governance services would be available across the nation in the next 24 months, with roughly one-third of revenue expected to be generated from the e-governance services and the rest from an array of private services including e-commerce, e-learning and e-health, said Sundararajan.

 

The Union Cabinet  had given  approval for setting up 100,000 rural CSCs to cater to six lakh villages. 

 

That is at least one CSC in a cluster of six villages, at a total cost of Rs 5,742 crore.

 

The Centre’s outlay would be Rs 856 crore, and the state governments will put Rs 793 crore.

 

The balance amount of Rs 4,093 crore is expected to come from the private sector.

 

The project, to be implemented by the Department of Information Technology will follow a public private partnership  route.

 

The National E-Governance Plan  consists of 26 central, state and integrated Mission Mode Projects along with eight other support components for rapid introduction of e-governance.

 

NeGP envisions a three pillar model for delivery of “web-enabled anytime, anywhere access” to information and services in rural India. The three pillars are connectivity through State Wide Area Networks, state data centres and CSCs.  

 

The CSC is positioned as a change agent that would promote rural entrepreneurship, build rural capacities and livelihoods, enable community participation and collective action for social change - through a bottom-up model with focus on the rural citizen.

 

 

The Centre had given its approval for setting up 100,000 rural CSCs

 

These will cater to six lakh villages

 

That is at least one CSC in a cluster of six villages