Common Services Centre Scheme (Pragya Kendra) – Jharkhand: Initiation, Development, and Challenges

Abstract

The Common Services Centre Scheme of the government of India started with hopes as well as apprehension, The whole project was floated as a part of the National e-Governance Plan (NeGP) based on study and analysis of successful and failed instances of e-governance projects in India. As a part of NeGP, it was proposed to set up telecentres through PPP models for ensuring delivery of G2C services to citizens. Moreover, telecentres are considered critical for the development of rural areas in developing countries and occupy an important position when considering policies for rural development. These telecentres, named as Common Service Centres (CSC), were visualized to be the panacea for the digital divide as well as act as the seed for spreading digital awareness and accessibility of digitally available services throughout the nation. As a part of this initiative a detailed feasibility study was done by PWC to understand the services to be offered through CSC at a designated cost including the probable locations of such CSCs. Jharkhand was the first state to announce the winner of their bidding process for selecting the state level agency for managing these telecenters through PPP with village level entrepreneurs (VLE) back in year 2006. However, the project has still not reached a logical conclusion and the challenges being faced by the executing agency are substantial. This case will be looking at the proposed business model and will be discussing the challenges being faced at the level of execution, typically focusing on issues that have made the whole project seem unviable at this point of time.