CSCs to push Aadhaar enabled subsidy

In its bid to give a major push to the Government of India's ambitious scheme for Aadhaar enabled direct electronic cash transfer of subsidies, the Department of Electronics and Information Technology (DeitY) is looking at roping the Common Services Centers (CSCs) in a big way.

Announcing this at a one-day workshop on CSC in New Delhi today, J Satyanarayana, secretary, DeitY said that CSCs can play a major role in delivering government's direct cash benefits to the beneficiaries in rural citizens.

"Direct delivery of cash benefits to the beneficiaries will have huge impact in the lives of rural citizens and the CSC network will address the issues of accessibility and affordability of financial services to the citizen in rural areas," he said.

Speaking on the occasion Rajeev Gauba, additional secretary, DeitY said that while there were 96,000 CSCs functional across the country, more than one crore real-time transactions with a total transaction volume of Rs 245 crore happens in a given month. "This gives bright outlook for the CSCs being used for delivering financial services to the rural citizens," Gauba added.

The workshops on "Catalyzing Financial Inclusion through CSCs" was organized by CSC e-Governance Services India Limited (CSC SPV), a special purpose vehicle set up by the Government of India to monitor the implementation of the CSC Scheme.

India spends a huge amount of Rs 325,000 crore annually on subsidies and the new scheme mooted by the central government intends to transfer individual benefits from the government directly into the bank accounts of beneficiaries.

Dinesh Tyagi, CEO, CSC SPV explained, "Delivery of financial services through CSCs includes, opening bank accounts, enabling transactions, pension and insurance related services." He further informed that CSC SPV has already signed Business Correspondence (BC) agreements with State Bank of India and Bank of India.

Giving details of State Bank of India's (SBI) role, its chief general manager, Ashish Kumar Roy said that the bank is committed in its mission of taking formal banking to all citizens. "SBI has implemented the home grown and time-tested technology for the Kiosk Banking model and it is one of the more recent initiatives taken by the bank to reach out to the hitherto unbanked in partnership with the CSC e-Governance Services India Limited," he said adding that the bank was confident that the association will broaden and deepen the financial inclusion initiatives and will go a long way in meeting SBI's dream of being the banker to every Indian.

In order to support CSCs at the grassroots and generate more awareness about the Scheme and the services that the Village Level Entrepreneurs (VLEs) can offer, CSC SPV proposes to carry out a series of workshops throughout the country. The workshops will focus on the areas such as financial inclusion, digital literacy, education, healthcare, agriculture, and Aadhaar services through CSCs.