Lokmitra Kendras or common service centers-the front-end delivery points for
the government, private and social sector services to rural citizens of India
for creating digitized government-has been facing a lot of impediments. The
scheme has been often missing deadlines due to various reasons. Some blame it on
the loopholes in the deployment by the government and power issues, while others
feel that connectivity is the main bottleneck in the pioneering framework.
The CSC deployment has been made to catalyze the e-governance services to
provide high quality and cost-effective video, voice and data content and
services, in areas of e-governance, education, health, telemedicine,
entertainment as well as other services.
A land of 6,38,000 villages-India needs connectivity at its best to make
these services available to its people without making them travel blocks and
districts. Delivery of services at the ground level among the rural folks is
what will make the scheme successful. A proposal to take the CSCs to 2.5 lakhs
by adding 1.5 lakhs has also been proposed by DIT. The proposal is known as
Bharat Nirman CSC and requires a financial support of roughly Rs 2,800 crore.
Under this plan, 2,50,000 CSCs will be setup in 6,00,000 villages across India.
Connectivity Missing
Wireless connectivity is the backbone of these CSCs, which is a major issue.
But with the BWA auctions being over, the connectivity issue will be resolved
and CSCs will find a life and a timely deployment of the same will be done. As
the bandwidth pipe will get widened with the wireless technology, there will be
seamless connectivity through video, voice and data.
Pranav Roach, president, Hughes says, “The connectivity issue from long has
been the main bottleneck in the implementation of this scheme.” Hughes connected
7,000 CSCs on a single network. With the BWA licencing over and the stakeholders
sounding positive that once wireless connectivity gets across the villages, the
CSCs will not only be deployed but also get functional.
Broadband penetration will boost the functionality of CSC deployment. Once
the connectivity issue gets solved, a major hurdle will get resolved.
There are also demographic patches which are better off as compared to other
regions. So there has been a disparity in the distribution of CSCs. Regions like
Himachal Pradesh, Northeastern states have comparatively lesser deployments than
the rest of the country.
The Bharat Nirman scheme has also been proposed by DIT which envisages to
deploy 1.5 lakh more CSCs to deal with the power failure. The scheme proposes to
build solar panels to meet the requirements. It will support devices like
printers, scanners, computers, etc.
While CSCs has been reeling under lack of commitment, power, connectivity
issues, there is a silver lining in the dark clouds. A lot of public private
partnership has also being going on to promote the CSC project. In March, 2010
Cisco signed an MoU to make education and healthcare solutions available through
CSCs across India.
The country's ambitious plans post BWA deployments are strong, as broadband
is being seen as the option that will spur the nation to new socio-economic
development. The visionary plans for CSCs will be boosted once the broadband
penetration happens across the country with the viable technology.
Archana Singh
archanasi@cybermedia.co.in
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