Everything You Need To Know About Common Service Centers – CSC

There has been a lot of confusion surrounding the Common Service Scheme or CSC. What is it? What does it do? Will it benefit us in any way? Today we are going to discuss all these points and delve deep into what the CSC is all about.

The Common Service Scheme has been introduced as part of the “good governance” paradigm. It is stated to be a two-in-one solution that will help to revamp the front-end delivery systems of the public services and at the same time will encourage rural entrepreneurship in order to create jobs. The CSC started as part of the E-governance plans in the year 2006. At present, it is one of the 31 Mission Mode Projects under “Digital India”.

The idea behind CSC is the digitization of several government schemes so that it becomes easier to carry out the process. This process includes the issuance of certificates, licenses and so on. The job will be handed over to the ‘Village Level Entrepreneurs (VLEs)’ who will run Common Service Centers. The aim is to have at least one CSC in each of the Gram Panchayats. At present, there are 2.5 lakh gram panchayats in the country. The entire thing will be a culmination of private and public partnership at the central level.

However, at the state level, the responsibility of hiring the VLE has been given to private companies known as the ‘Service Centre Agencies’. The qualifications to become a VLE are very minimal. This has been done to encourage participation from the villages. The higher the participation the greater will be the success of this scheme.

Stats to support:

As per government reports, the current figure is as such:

2.6 lakh VLE’s are in place, which offers services across 3,462 CSC centers in the country.
The total transaction carried out in 2017 amounts to Rs. 1,975 lakh.
Services include – Aadhar card and PAN card registration, booking of the train tickets, music downloads and checking one’s bank balance or information on eligibility of schemes and so on.

This is not all; the government is also planning on offline services that will make things easier and hassle-free.

What is the Common Service Scheme?

The Government of India started the Common Service Centre Scheme. This was done as part of the National E-Governance Plan Scheme. It aims to provide G2C (Government to Citizen) and B2C (Business to Citizens) services to citizens right at their home under Bharat Nirman.

As per this scheme, the budget has been allocated to 100,000 Common Service Centres in rural areas and 10000 CSC in Urban India. High quality and cost effective e-governance Services are the main cornerstones of this scheme.

Objectives of CSC-

The above-mentioned scheme is implemented in PPP (Public Private Partnership) Framework. Some of the major attributes of this scheme are:

Emphasis on entrepreneurship in rural areas
Offering services to the private sector as well
Community needs are given special importance
Playing an important role in the development of rural India and offering livelihoods
Offers to act as an agent to numerous Government and Non Government services
One-stop solution for various G2C and B2C Services.

One CSC will cover 6 villages, which is approximately 6,00,000 villages.

Structure of CSC-

The PPP model will be based on 3- tier structure-

The State Designed Authority will be responsible for managing and implementing the CSC services across the state.
The Service Center Agency (SCA) under the guidance of the owner of CSC will set up the CSC and will also decide the locations for Common Service Centre. This will play a role in promoting the CSC in rural area through numerous promotion campaigns, which will be carried out at the state or local level. The SCA is accountable for the 500-1000 CSCs operating under him.
The Village Level Entrepreneur is the CSC Operator. 6 Villages will fall under him

What Are The Services Provided by CSC?

CSC offers numerous utility payments, health check services for the betterment of the citizens. It aims to make life simple and hassle-free.