"The Eggs and Chicken story ends here"

Blog - 02

It is not a dead horse scheme. The Common Service Centers (CSCs) were established to provide e-services to citizens living in villages and not to provide internet connectivity to villages. The players like 3I Infotech, Reliance what you have referred to media are the people those who have stepped in the business without estimation and understanding the scheme and have quoted negative for the subsidy being offered from the Government and that is their wrong planning which has brought this bad name to the scheme.

"The face of Common Service Center is changing with initial road blocks. We do not look for any supportive subsidy from the Government as our income, it is a Public Private Partnership Scheme as private companies is invested a lot. Only what required is the coordination of the synergy to use this network by all the service Department may it be health education, education and rural development. I put it like this that chicken and egg story ends here. The kiosk are set-up (egg) hatch them the way you want. Just because of the miscalculation of some organizations like 3I Infotech, Reliance on the negative bidding trend, they have started, the entire scheme can't be declared as a dead horse".

Other side of the story is there are good things happening in CSC Project and with the Public Private Partnership, the services spectrum is now reaching to the rural areas. I do agree that there are certain gray areas like non availability of G2C services or rather poor or limited services of G2C services or shall I may say more precise, "The e-District" but services like railway reservation and several such initiatives are slowly and gradually changing the face. Yes, the broadband connectivity is the challenge still but with your plan for connecting all the Panchayats with broadband will definitely remove this road block also. I would like to share that there are VLEs working as business correspondent of State Bank of India and other banks through SCAs like Sehri, NICT, AISECT and making financial inclusion really happening. The district administration and State Government were distributing NREGS wages payment, scholarship etc. directly in the beneficiaries account, removing all inter-mediatory through this Common Service Centers. There are success stories where kiosk operators are earning more than Rs. 7,000/- per month and there are cases where these kiosk operators who earned Rs. 50,000/- in a month as a business correspondent on Commission Revenue generated by NICT SCA is only taken here, but if the statistical data of other SCA's like Sehri, AISECT, Spanco, GNG and other taken in account collectively, the story is quite encouraging the things are happening and VLE are taking, center stage as change agent. Yes it is slow but not dead.

There are many such stories with SCA, where VLE's are doing well reaching the last mile, enabling last mile infrastructure and capacity. The Siroliya SCC VLE in District in District Dewas of Madhya Pradesh State has closed with the commission of Rs. 60,000/- in last three months averaging Rs. 20,000/- per month. It is not only the one story, there are so many such VLEs.