The Srei Sahaj e-Village Ltd head of operations in Uttar Pradesh, Ashutosh Shrivastava, talks to Chanpreet Khurana about the company’s experience in rolling out services through common service centres (CSCs). Excerpts:

What is causing the delay in offering government-to-customer services?

People need these services and the franchisees are ready?the village level entrepreneurs (VLEs) want these services to be sold through their centres. I don’t see any reason for them to delay rolling out the services, but we appreciate digitising everything is a mammoth task and business process re-engineering is involved for the government. All these things take time.

But there is also the natural inertia to change?change in mindset, change in working culture and capacity-building. There is a fear of technology among some government officials. They are not very comfortable with the systems. All those problems are there, but I am sure if they decide to do it, they can roll out government services in all 71 districts of UP through CSCs next month.

VLEs say they want to participate in data collection and entry projects such as gathering information for NREGA rolls, but are not given a chance…

An idea that comes from Delhi takes a few years to reach the block level. That is the reality of this country. Also, you are wanting to change everything?that everybody should do everything online itself is a huge thing.

What are the hiccups in making land records available online?

It is a natural resistance of government officials at the lower level or the district level. Second, there is no sense of clear-cut ownership. A district magistrate has to do everything and is overburdened. The IT department is a low-profile department in any government compared with say revenue or social development or rural development. Some DMs have set good examples like Amod Kumar in Sitapur who had started the successful Lok Vani project even before this project was launched.

Third, there is a technical thing in land records. In some areas, they find validation of whatever data they digitise is a challenge. For example, Ram Kumar can be spelt in a dozen different ways. Then in states like Uttar Pradesh, electricity is a major challenge. You will be having a state data centre and a SWAN and you don’t have electricity to run them. Even if you have a generator, you don’t have a maintenance or support system.

Are the SWAN centres going to be functional soon?

State data centre itself is not there as of now. The land is finalised and they are floating tenders for making the state data centre. That might take one or two years. Then digitisation and services integration from dozens of departments will happen. How they will be delivered and at what price, all those questions will come later. First, they need to have the will to start it in the next six months and they have to take it on a war-footing basis. Also, somebody like the chief secretary or the chief minister should take ownership and responsibilty for digitisation, computerisation, capacity-building and system build-up back-end support over the next three or six months.

There is also some noise at the Centre about how these kiosks could be used for schemes such as the UID project…

We are very strong contenders for doing it. In this country, no one has the kind of reach we have. Today, we are catering to a 20 crore population base. One Srei Sahaj centre on average takes care of a catchment area of not less than 10,000 people. We have already rolled out 20,000 centres across six states, so 20,000 times 10,000 is 20 crore population. no vendor, no retail chain has reach like ours. And we are equipped with state-of-the-art IT platform, equipment and systems. We are managing a level-III data centre, we are running nine portals for different states.

Have you been approached for UID?

No, we will have to approach the people. If I ask one CSC to carry out a survey, it will be better than any sample surveys they do. Because my VLE who is running a CSC is known by 100% families of that area. Traditionally, every sixth village has a centre, or per 10,000 population base will have a centre. It is very easy for a VLE to collect the required data, including for UID, given the kind of infrastructure we have. We are approaching UID, let us see how it progresses.

Do you see yourself participating in some other government banking schemes?

We have created a highway and any kind of services can run on it. We have a centre, this centre is connected through satellite to a data centre, which can be integrated to Central or state government departments. To and fro information flow is possible within seconds. On that same platform, you can start banking services, you can start NREGA disbursements, you can start citizen-centric certificate issuance.

How do you choose your VLEs?

That is a tough process. We first give an advertisement. The candidate should preferably be a graduate. Some knowledge of computers is a plus or at least have some entrepreneurial skills. That aptitude is required as this is not a social service, it’s a business. So he should have aptitude, acumen, and inclination for doing business. We go through the initial screening by a well-devised form which they submit in duplication. They are called for an interview, and then someone from our office goes and carries out a survey to find out more about the person. We take a certificate about the character of the person from the village pradhan also. He should also have the capacity to invest in the project.

You said it is a business. Are you also thinking along the lines of how these VLEs can reap profits?

VLEs are making money. Except, this is a funny situation, the idea of this project was first to deliver government services, which have not yet come yet. But we have to run, and VLEs will have to earn because they have invested in this infrastructure. I don’t know whether in the next five years government services will come or not. In this public-private partnership model, it is nothing but integration of the social goals of the government and commercial goals of the private partner. Now, we have brought a lot of private commercial services, like insurance, we have brought in e-learning, which is a huge success, we have brought in utility services like railway reservation, air-ticketing, mobile recharges, information services, and we are giving all these services through these centres. We are waiting for government-to-customer services to come, which was the objective of this project.