Information technology hardware majors and even large corporate houses are making a beeline to grab a piece of the Common Service Centre (CSC) pie.
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.
A new revolution
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
Autor(en)/Author(s): Priti Bajaj
Quelle/Source: Daily News & Analysis, 04.12.2006
