IT Services accessed by Rural poor

Over 10,000 Common Service Centres set up in villages
Over
10,300 Common Service Centre (CSC) have been set up in eight States to
provide the rural population in remote areas with a mix of government,
private and social sector services. The services which are the
initiatives of the Department of Information Technology are both IT
based and non-IT based. The states are Jharkhand, Haryana, West Bengal,
Bihar, Tripura, Gujarat, Tamil Nadu and Madhya Pradesh. The Centres
have come up as part of the Government’s plan to establish one lakh
Common Service Centres (CSCs) in six lakh villages in the country. The
establishment of most of the Centres is likely to be completed by next
year. The Scheme has been approved at a total cost of Rs 5742 Cr. over
4 years, of which the Government of India is to contribute Rs 856 Cr.
and the State Governments Rs 793 Cr. The balance resources would be
mobilized from the private sector. The Common Service Centres are
ICT-enabled Kiosks having a PC along with basic support equipment like
Printer, Scanner, UPS, with Wireless Connectivity as the backbone and
additional equipment for edutainment, telemedicine, projection systems,
etc. The contracts for setting up of the Centres are given through a
bidding process by the respective state governments. It takes about
twelve months for execution of the contract. The Scheme is being
implemented through a Public Private Partnership. CSCs constitute one
of the three pillars of the National e-Governance Plan for enabling
anytime anywhere delivery of government services, the other two being
(a) the State Wide Area Network (for Connectivity) which has already
been approved by the Government for Rs 3334 Cr. and b) the State Data
Centre Scheme (for secure hosting of data and applications) for which
implementation committees have been formed in several states.
Department of Information Technology (DIT) has appointed a National
Level Service Agency (NLSA), to coordinate the entire activity.