60,000 IT-enabled rural centres by August 2008

New Delhi: Over 60,000 IT-enabled community service centers (CSCs) are expected to be operational in 11 states by August 2008, according to the Department of IT. These centers would serve as the front-end delivery points for the Government, private and social sector services to rural citizens in the country.

"We expect about 60,500 CSCs to be set up and become operational by August 2008 in States such as Jharkhand, West Bengal, Haryana, Bihar, Assam, Tripura, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Punjab, Gujarat and Tamil Nadu," Ashish Sanyal, Senior Director, Department of IT, said at a seminar on `Spreading ICT revolution to rural India.' Rural Marketing Agencies Association India (RMAAI) and Nasscom Foundation organized the seminar.

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To provide support for establishing 100,000 CSCs in 600,000 villages in the country, the Government had earlier approved a CSC scheme. These centres will be designed as ICT-enabled kiosks with a PC along with basic support equipment such as printer, scanner, UPS, with wireless connectivity as the backbone and additional equipment for edutainment, and telemedicine.

They would provide information and services such as e-governance, micro-credit, education and health, amongst others. While the Government services would include certificates, licenses and grievance redressal, the private services would cover market price of commodities, education and entertainment offerings.

Sanyal pointed out that the sustainability of the rural kiosks would depend heavily on robustness of the business model, content and services range, as also the ability of village entrepreneur running the kiosks. The scheme based on public-private partnership requires a total cost of Rs 5,742 crore, of which the Government would contribute over Rs 800 crore.