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The network of Common Service Centres (CSCs) that provides electronic services in banking, insurance, passport seva, telemedicine and pensions, is set to be expanded to all the 2.5 lakh gram panchayats by the end of this year, from around 1.8 lakh at present.
The Centre is not only providing electronic services, but also digital literacy and entrepreneurship to the villagers by enrolling them to become cottage industrialists. CSC has also started converting some of these villages into ‘DigiGaon’ or ‘digital villages’ in some States.
One such digital village was showcased by Minister of Electronics and Information Technology Ravi Shankar Prasad on Sunday. Situated at Dhanauri Kalan village in Gautam Budh Nagar (Uttar Pradesh), it is the sixth such digital village in the country.
Prasad said the CSC movement had transformed into a game-changer, bringing critical services such as banking and telemedicine to rural areas and remote villages.
“CSCs are working in 1.83 lakh gram panchayats and it will reach 2.5 lakh gram panchayats by end of the year. I am happy to see that these villagers don’t have to go to a town to get services like banking or jeevan beema,” he told reporters in Greater Noida.
He said that as many as 2.91 CSCs are operating in the country now, from 82,000 in 2014.
Rural transformation
Prasad further said CSCs are one of the cornerstones of the Prime Minister’s ‘Digital India’ programme. “About 700 digital villages will be established by the year-end,” he said.
Villages such as Piyala and Dayalpur (Haryana), Chandankiyari East and Shivbabudih (Jharkhand) and Dhanauri Kalan and Sultanpur (Uttar Pradesh) have been chosen for the pilot project.
DigiGaon was conceptualised as a connected village where citizens can get various e-services of the Centre and State governments and private players in a rural and remote villages in the country.
These DigiGaons are projected to be change agents, promoting rural entrepreneurship and building rural capacities and livelihoods through community participation and collective action.
BharatNet is the backbone of the whole project.
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