ICommon Services Centers (CSCs) are a strategic cornerstone of the Digital India programme. They are the access points for delivery of various electronic services to villages in India, thereby contributing to a digitally and financially inclusive society.
CSCs are more than service delivery points in rural India. They are positioned as change agents, promoting rural entrepreneurship and building rural capacities and livelihoods. They are enablers of community participation and collective action for engendering social change through a bottom-up approach with key focus on the rural citizen.
CSCs are the front-end delivery points for G2C, B2C and social sector services to citizens of India. The CSCs are manned by village level entrepreneur (VLE), who is a local person appointed to deliver these services and are the real ambassadors of Digital India. They generate business for themselves and also serve their community. Hence, developing a better platform for service delivery and bringing services at the doorstep of rural population.
Presently CSCs are delivering a plethora of services namely:
- Financial Inclusion services: Banking, Insurance and Pension services.
- Education services: Digital literacy, PMGDISHA, Financial literacy etc.
- Health Services: Telemedicine, Jan Aushadhi,Diagnostics & Health products.
- Government to Citizens services: Railway ticketing , EPIC cards, Land records, Aadhaar, Birth & Death registration, Passport, electricity bill collection etc
- Business to Citizen services: DTH services, Mobile recharge etc.
CSC SPV delivers these services through a universal technological platform across the nation, thereby making the e-services accessible anywhere. CSCs are more than service delivery points in rural India; they are positioned as change agents, promoting rural entrepreneurship and building rural capacities and livelihoods.
They are enablers of community participation and collective action for engendering social change. CSCs are emerging as the most viable option for service delivery to rural India by public and private sector alike, thereby contributing to a digitally and financially inclusive society. Under the Digital India initiative, one CSC is envisaged in every Panchayat. There will be approximately 274,000 access points for delivery of various G2C services to the citizens across rural India. This would be the largest network in the world to be utilised by both government and private agencies for delivery of various products and services to citizens in rural India.
CSC 2.0 has been formulated in pursuance of the Government's commitment to set up CSCs in all 2,5 lakhs Gram Panchayats to provide public e-services to citizens in rural areas under the Digital India Programme. This would also include strengthening and integrating the existing one lakh CSCs already operational under the existing CSC Scheme and making operational an additional 1.5 lakhs CSCs at Gram Panchayats (preferably at GP premises).
This entrepreneurship model is essentially a service delivery oriented model with an effort towards optimum utilisation of infrastructure already created in the form of SWAN, SSDG, e-District, SDC and other ICT infrastructures, including NOFN/BharatNet. It is envisaged as a service/transaction oriented model with a large bouquet of services made available for the citizens.
- Non-discriminatory access to e-Services for rural citizens by making CSCs service delivery centres, utilizing the backend infrastructure already created in terms of other MMPs
- Expansion of self-sustaining CSC network till Gram Panchayat level — 2.5 lakh CSCs, i.e. at least one CSC per Gram Panchayat. More than one preferred
- Empowering District e-Governance Society (DeGS) under district administration for implementation
- Creating and strengthening the institutional framework for rollout and project management, thereby, supporting the State and district administrative machinery and handholding the VLEs through local language
- Help Desk support
- Enablement and consolidation of online services under one technology platform, thereby, making the service delivery at CSC outlets accountable, transparent, efficient and traceable
- Providing Centralized Technological Platform for delivery of various services in a transparent manner to the citizens
- Increasing sustainability of VLEs by sharing maximum commission earned through delivery of e-services and encouraging women as VLEs