The Bengal government has cancelled its authorization of the Common Service Centres (Tathya Mitra Kendras) that rendered online services to citizens against the realization of user charges. Instead, it has set up the Bangla Sahayata Kendra to provide digital services to people free of cost. Citizens can reportedly access all schemes of the state government through the BSK. The expenditure to set up and run the BSK centres will be borne by the state. The chief minister has urged people to visit BSKs instead of availing facilities on payment of user charges in CSCs sponsored by the Centre.
The CSC project was envisaged by the United Progressive Alliance government to be implemented in a public-private-partnership model. The centres were to be run by tech-savvy, young entrepreneurs who would provide e-services to the rural population through a single delivery platform on payment of user charges. The bouquet of services included basic transactions of banks and post offices, payment of bills and insurance premiums, booking of travel tickets, access to e-forms, e-Nagarik and e-District services — birth/death certificates, caste/domicile certificates, PAN card, voter card, Aadhaar card enrolment, downloading and printing — passport applications, e-courts and result services, income tax return filings and so on. The CSCs were also thought of to provide access to skill upgradation, cost effective health services to rural masses, notification for recruitments and provide expert advice on weather/soil information to the farmers. The revenue support to the CSCs was to be borne by the Central and the state governments.
Impressed by the success of the CSC model in its formative years, the National Democratic Alliance government decided to expand the scheme to each of the 2,50,000 gram panchayats and included it as one of the mission modes projects under Digital India. However, the success of the scheme is crucially dependent on healthy federal relations. Whatever may be the compulsions of competitive politics in an election year, Bengal’s parallel initiative undermines the premise that CSCs would be dependent on support from different layers of government in an ideal federal environment. The new initiative of the Bengal government, even though it may provide some employment opportunities, will jeopardize the viability of the CSCs.
Did the CSCs fulfil the expectations of the policymakers? Did any state board venture to use the CSCs to reach students at a time when schools are closed because of the pandemic? Did the state health department explore the possibility of using CSCs for providing skeletal healthcare services to the rural population? There is always scope for introspection.
Attempts were made to turn village entrepreneurs into banking correspondents of some private banks. Under this arrangement, the CSC was to function as the business facilitator of the bank to promote financial inclusion in rural areas. But there has been no visible impact of such efforts.
Although the CSC model was not developed exclusively for rural areas, its impacts are mainly in gramin Bharat. If the CSC is to grow, it must ride piggyback on the rural postal network. Nearly 88 per cent of post offices in India are rural branch offices manned by gramin dak sevaks, who are well-versed in operating smartphones and hand-held devices connected to remote servers. Willing gramin branch postmasters must be roped in on a war-footing to provide services through the CSC portal outside their usual working hours in the post office. There is absolutely no point in having CSC in the departmental post offices that are mostly in the urban areas. The integration of gramin dak sevaks in the CSC system will lead to the expansion of CSC infrastructure and provide dak sevaks with a supplementary source of income.
There was a time when trade unions and certain political parties were opposed to any form of computerization in offices. But the people’s perspective started changing, at least in urban areas, with the computerization of the railway reservation system. The computerization of the post office has had a similar effect. More than 26 crore digital transactions took place, involving an amount of Rs 30,473 crore, through hand-held devices in little more than a year. Admittedly, internet connectivity remains a concern in nearly 18 per cent of Indian villages. But if the CSC were to tie up effectively with the rural postal network, the two together may emerge as the engine of change in gramin Bharat.
