True value, say analysts at common service centre (CSC), the wheels that seeks to bring about changes in terms of of e-governance services to rural India.Once a network of 50,000, of the planned 100,000 CSC?s across 600,000 villages are up and running, the vision of bringing government services, micro-business and agri-business opportunities to the common man will take form.
When CSC?s were conceptualised in 2006, the goal was to reach the 100,000-mark by 2009. This has been now been extended by another six du to elections. Says Ninad Vengurlekar, an IL&FS spokesperson, ?Many states have the intent but are missing the execution ability because of bureaucratic hurdles, for instance if an IT secretary is changed in a state then the entire CSC schedule in the state can be pushed back?.
Other states such as Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka already have spread out IT centers and here the challenge is integrating existing centers with the CSC?s e-governance agenda.
CSCs, budgeted at Rs 5,000 crore with 1/3rd coming from the government have a lot of private investors showing interest as entrepreneurs in states such as Andhra Pradesh and Gujarat are creating services as per a ?demand-pull? making the business prospect lucrative and in fact leading to reverse bidding. The government?s contribution so far has been Rs 300 crore. Department of information technology; IL&FS which has been appointed by the ministry as the national coordinator of the CSC programme; realtors and financers such as the largest CSC investor SREI Sahaj and others such as Zoom Developers, Reliance owning the franchises; telecom and technology players such as BSNL, Hughes, Airtel, Reliance, Wipro, Cisco, TCS, Infosys, extending their technical expertise; conceptual experts such as digital empowerment foundation; IIM Ahmedabad and national bank for agriculture and rural development who have together co-developing a 15 days social entrepreneur skill courses funded by state governments; retailers such as Subhiksha, Reliance Retail, ITC offering services to farmers; banks such as SBI, ICICI, HDFC, PNB, J&K offering loans to villagers. These are just a representation of the stake holders involved and also indicative of the web of accountability which is what makes the CSCs reliable.
Says Mahesh Uppal, telecom expert and Director of Com First, ?State franchisers see the lucrative ness of the CSC model which is built on the premise of 1/3rd revenue from government services and 2/3rd from independent ventures and are pushing for speedy execution, IL&FS on the other hand acting on the guise of the DIT are more focused on long term concerns?. SREI themselves have committed Rs 1000 crores over five years and SREI?s CSCs alone will impact lives of 28 crore Indians.
Services can be as simple as providing a ration card to a villager when needed or those which will require a complete shift in mindset among villagers but could in turn facilitate financial inclusion across rural India. For instance in just over a year Union Bank of India sold Rs 1.6 crore worth of loans in Katewadi village through its tie-up with the CSC in Baramati district in Maharashtra. Earlier villagers were going to moneylenders or to regional rural banks charging them interest as high as 20% on the loans. In order to change the mindset, at first CSC owners actually deputed their people outside the local money lenders? shops and persuaded villagers to opt instead for the loan being offered through Union Bank at 9%. Just imagine says Vengurlekar, ?If each of the 100,000 CSC?s across India are able to each month sell to rural population Rs 50 lakh worth of loans?.
While issues such as security, accessibility, poor power supply and weather variations in villages presents a tough challenge to CSCs, ultimately it will be the e-governance services rolled out for citizens both centrally and at the state level which will make it a sustainable model. E-governance services usually follows the broader governance structure within countries, which is why countries such as Singapore and Korea have a centrally driven platform, and America and Canada have a more bottoms up approach because lots of areas of governance are state subjects per their constitution. Indian government thus has a hybrid approach to e-governance with both centrally top down driven and also bottom up state driven projects.