India has rolled out over 94,000 Common Service Centres (CSCs) in 31 states and Union Territories to take Information Communication Technology (ICT) to the remote part of the country. Ten States including Gujarat, Kerala, Sikkim, Tripura, Jharkhand, Pondicherry, Manipur, Chandigarh, Goa and Delhi have completed 100-per cent rollout.
Under the scheme, connectivity has been provided to 67,883 CSCs by April 2011. The Department of Information Technology (DIT) has also developed an Online Monitoring Tool for monitoring the uptime of the CSCs.
12,510 of these are located in the Naxal-affected areas of 11 states, according to a government statement. Owing to which, the rollout is found to be a bit slow in the difficult and naxal-affected areas where setting up of CSCs is quite challenging, the statement said.
The rollout of CSCs has, in some cases, been delayed on account of delay in the selection of new Service Centre Agencies (SCAs) in Uttar Pradesh, Haryana, Punjab, Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka. However, in order to ensure availability of connectivity to all CSCs, DIT is supporting BSNL to provide Wireline and WiMax-based broadband connectivity to all 100,000 CSCs.
So far, around 40,000 CSCs have had connectivity through BSNL. In the North East and difficult areas, DIT is providing VSAT-based connectivity with the help of NIC. Envisaged to deliver web-enabled anytime, anywhere access to information and services across the country, these CSCs will cover six lakh villages in the country.
The project is being implemented on a Public-Private Partnership (PPP) model with a three-tier implementation framework, in which the State Designated Agency (SDA) enters into a Master Service Agreement (MSA) with the Service Centre Agency (SCA) which appoints the Village Level Entrepreneurs (VLEs) to operate the CSCs. The CSC project is being implemented at a cost of Rs.1,649 crore with a substantial investment from the private sector.
