Vimal Kumar Gupta of Jabrauli village in Mohanlalganj block had been running from pillar to post to get the required documents for registering himself with an unemployment exchange to avail the unemployed allowance announced by the Samajwadi Party. But despite several rounds of the lekhpal?s office in the tehsil, he was unable to get the documents. It was during one of these trips that someone told him about the common service centre in the locality. ?I was told I only need to get a family income document from my village pradahan and two gazetted officers to attest my documents, both of which are not difficult. I can now register for the unemployment allowance online. This is a boon for people like us, who otherwise have to make innumerable visits to government offices, only to find officials absent or having to pay bribes for small things,? says an elated Gupta, as he fills the form with the help of Abhishek Dwivedi, the village level entrepreneur who runs the Mastipur CSC at Mohanlalganj.
But for Dwivedi, an MBA passout who is running this CSC, things have not been a cakewalk. Having got the franchise in 2008, when the project was launched in UP, he was able to start G2C services only a fortnight back, when the state portal for providing e-delivery of 26 services from eight government departments was launched. The departments covered under this project include services from food & civil supplies, training & employment, urban development, handicap welfare, panchayati raj, social welfare, women welfare & child development and revenue department. The services include issuance of various certificates like birth, death, income, domicile and records of land rights.
?While my set-up has been in place since 2010, it took almost two years to start the e-delivery of government services as the back-hand automation and linkages necessary for providing them had not been put in place by the respective departments,? says Dwivedi.
Insiders in the government feel though the delay in rolling out the services was mainly due to a lack of political will, the other major reasons have been lack of proper power supply and communication facilities at the village level. ?With supply for around eight-ten hours a day and four-six hours in interior villages, power has always been a problem in UP and the biggest reason for the state not being able to take the ambitious technological leap forward,? says an official associated with the project. In fact, Mohanlalganj, which comes under Lucknow district and is about 25 kms from the city, gets only eight-ten hours of power supply daily. ?And in case a transformer gets damaged, the area goes without power for a week to ten days at a stretch. Though we have back-up in the form of inverters and gensets, it is difficult to operate them for long durations,? says Dwivedi.
Moreover, high speed connectivity is hard to come by in far-flung villages. ?Though state-run BSNL is working on it, the progress is slow. We have stated having a dongle back-up, but their performance is very poor and we are forced to depend on towers for that,? says Navin Patwardhan, senior manager of Srei Sahaj e-Village, one of the three service centre agencies engaged in appointing VLEs. Of the total 18,745 CSCs that are to come up in all the 75 districts of UP, only 9,920 have been opened so far. And many of these are still not able to run successfully as they do not have any business model to hold them in good stead till the time demand for G2C services can be met. ?Srei Sahaj is the only company amongst the three agencies chosen for the job that has evolved a sustainability provision for the VLEs. We have hand-held them into forming various business ventures with other companies such as getting general insurance and life insurance licences, tie-ups with various portals for e-learning courses, mobile and DTH top-ups, tally courses, etc. This is all being done so as to augment the income of the VLEs, as running only a G2C service will not be viable,? says Yogesh Mishra, zonal manager of Srei Sahaj.
?If we are able to create more competition, the prices of services will come down and the delivery of services will be better. The Centre has asked us to raise the number of services to 100. With the inauguration of the gateway, we hope that soon UP will be able to include many more departments and services,? says Jeevesh Nandan, state principal secretary (IT&E), adding that within just a fortnight of opening of the gateway, many people have shown interest in becoming VLEs.
?The reason for becoming a VLE was simple. After BCA and MBA degrees, I wanted to start my own venture, and I also did not want to leave my village. Even though this venture is not very profitable at the moment, with earnings only about R6,000 per month, it is bound to grow in the coming years when footfalls for G2C services increase. Till that time, I plan more B2C services to meet my expenses,? rings off Dwivedi.