CSCs vying for business viability through education

On 19th February, 2013, the CSC e-Governance Services India Limited (CSC SPV) organised a workshop on ‘CSCs: Transforming India into a Knowledge Society,' to discuss and identify potential educational services to be delivered through the Common Services Centers (CSCs). Under the National e-Governance Plan, the Department of Electronics and Information Technology has set up more than one lakh CSCs across the country primarily in rural areas. In order to support CSCs at the grassroots level and develop a bouquet of services for CSCs, the CSC SPV organises a series of workshops to bring all stakeholders together and develop frameworks for delivery of services to rural citizens.

Every rural citizen seeks a better life for his children and intuitively knows that this is possible only through education. Unfortunately, few Indian villages have access to quality education. Realizing that education is the fulcrum for livelihood creation in villages, CSC SPV is partnering with various premier educational institutions and vocational training providers to extend the educational services in rural India through CSCs.

While inaugurating the workshop J Satyanarayana, secretary, Department of Electronics and Information Technology (DeitY) said, "CSC Network is the world's largest telecentre network. Educational services can be a rewarding service for VLEs, who want to make a difference in the community and enhance its long-term sustainability. CSC network can be leveraged to provide a number of educational services including Adult Literacy, Digital Literacy, Extending School and Higher Education, and Vocational Education. CSCs can be an important channel for achieving the objective of making one individual in every family digitally literate under the National IT Policy 2012. CSCs can play a crucial role in increasing the access to knowledge in rural areas. He also emphasised the need for improving infrastructure, capacity building, standardisation of content, and certification process to enable CSCs for delivering education services in rural India."

While welcoming the participants to the workshop Dinesh Tyagi, CEO, CSC SPV said, "CSCs can be used to provide holistic educational services in rural areas including Content Delivery, Facilitation Services, Training and Capacity Building, and Administration Support. The opportunity for generating higher income for VLEs is in Educational services. Through this workshop, we are further trying to explore the possibility of delivering more educational services through CSCs and discuss the operational challenges thereof."

Radha Chauhan, joint secretary (SE-I), Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD) said "CSC network can be used in a variety of ways by MHRD including supporting the Government in administration, data collection, monitoring, and counselling. It can also provide tutoring and supplementary school education content delivery services. However, CSCs have to improve its physical, technical and human infrastructures for the delivery of educational services." She also said that CSC SPV has to align with the requirements of MHRD to take the discussions forward and need more interaction with concerned departments at the State level.

"The National Institute of Electronics and Information Technology (NIELIT) signed a Memorandum of Understanding to integrate NIELIT Authorised Centers under the CSC scheme and offer various NIELIT services through CSCs in rural areas," said Ashwini Kumar Sharma, managing director, NIELIT.

The workshop was attended by State govt officials, international organisations, development professionals, private players, SCAs and Village Level Entrepreneurs who agreed to utilise the CSC network for delivery of various educational services. Certain implementation and policy intervention issues were discussed and suggestion made to address the same. CSC SPV will follow up these with concerned agencies and enable a framework for engagement of all the CSCs as Knowledge Hubs.