CSC Full Form

The Indian government started this scheme as a part of the National E-Governance Plan Scheme. It focuses on providing Government to Citizen (G2C) and Business to Citizen (B2C) services under Bharat Nirman to the citizens. The common service center plan was started in the year 2006 as a part of e-governance. The aim behind CSC is to digitalize the various government schemes to make the process easier.

The budget allocation for this scheme has been done to 100000 CSC of rural areas and 10000 CSC of urban areas. The main cornerstones of this scheme are cost-effective and high-quality governance services. It is planned to hand over the jobs to the Village Level Entrepreneurs (VLE)  to run the CSC. The idea is to have at least one common service centre in every Gram panchayat.

Objectives of Common Service Centre

The scheme is implemented in the Public-Private Partnership format. Some of the objectives are:

• Offer service to private sectors 
• To play an important role in the development process of rural India and to promote livelihood
• It is a one-stop solution for several B2C and G2C services
• Focus on entrepreneurship in the rural areas
• It offers to act as an agent for various Non-Government and Government services
• Special importance is given to the community needs

Structure of Common Service Centre

The Public-Private Partnership model is based on the structure of a 3-tier

1. The State Designed Authority is responsible for executing and managing the common service centre services all over the state 
2. The owner of CSC will guide the Service Center Agency in setting up the common service centre and deciding the locations for CSC. They will promote CSC through promotional campaigns in rural areas. Service Center Agencies will be operating 500 to 1000 common service centres.
3. The operator of the CSC will be the Village Level Entrepreneur and a total of 6 villages will be operated by him.

Services offered by Common Service Centres

It will provide high-quality and cost-effective voice, data, and video services and content in the various public and private sectors. Web-enabled e-governance will be offered by CSCs in rural areas. With G2C, B2C, and B2B services various other services and content offered are:

• Education and Training services
• Health Services
• Agriculture services
• Entertainment services
• Utility services
• Rural Banking and insurance services
• Commercial services 

Eligibility for the Common Service Centre

The eligibility criteria to start a common service centre in any area is:

1. The applicant should be a local person
2. The age of the application must be 18 years or above
3. The qualification required is class 10 or any other equivalent of that
4. Should have basic English speaking skills
5. Should have basic knowledge of computer
6. Should be fluent in reading and writing the local language
7. Should have a valid PAN and virtual ID 

Infrastructure required for the Common Service Centre

• Pc with the licensed operating system
• Minimum 120 GB hard disc drive
• CD/DVD drive
• Minimum 512 MB RAM
• UPS with a 4-hour battery back-up
• Webcam
• Good internet connection
• Printer and scanner
• Biometrics/IRIS Authentication scanner

Reason to set up the Common Service Centres

The main reason was to avoid the need for middlemen.

With the introduction of the common service centre, there will be no dependency of the citizens on middlemen. Many times the middlemen have duped the citizens. Now with this scheme of G2C services, there will be no benefits to the middlemen and the services launched will be directly introduced to the common people with full transparency.

Another reason is the rates of the government services will be properly publicized. Therefore, preventing the bribery system.

As a part of this scheme, a Special Purpose Vehicle (SPV) has been introduced to operate through e-governance effectively and progressively.

It was incorporated under the Companies Act 1956, on the 16th of July 2009. The name given is CSC e-governance Services India Ltd. Its objective is to monitor the whole CSC scheme and check that all the activities are completed as per the guidelines.

Roles of Special Purpose Vehicle

The roles of SPV are:

• To monitor the goals and outcomes of the CSC scheme 
• To check the sustainability and systemic viability of the common service centre scheme
• To act as a catalyst regularly 
• To maintain the framework for decision-making purposes in a collaborative method

About CSC 2.0 scheme

Based on the evaluation of the CSC scheme, the government introduced a new CSC 2.0 scheme in 2015 to expand the reach of CSCs in all gram panchayats around the country. Existing CSCs will be integrated and strengthened with the addition of 1.5 lakhs CSCs around the country. It will be working to make G2C services available to common people anywhere across the country.

Conclusion

With the help of this scheme, a direct government-citizen connection is made possible. If all the objectives are properly followed and all the plans are executed as per this scheme then India can become a Digital platform from every aspect.