The scheme seeks to provide online digital services such as e-governance, education, health, entertainment and telemedicine through Village Level Entrepreneurs (VLEs) who meet certain eligibility requirements and register with a State Designated Agency.
There are, however, concerns regarding their sustainability and viability given that these organizations operate like businesses maximizing profits for their owners while acting as public service agents.
Access to Information
CSCs serve as front end service delivery points at village level, providing citizens access to government and private services. Operating on digital platforms makes CSCs simpler for management and operation – they are overseen by Village Level Entrepreneurs (VLEs), who receive training and support from CSC operators as they provide their services.
VLEs also assist communities in learning financial literacy by encouraging cashless transactions, which is especially vital in rural areas which often have limited access to banking services. Furthermore, this scheme has brought government services closer to citizens while simultaneously decreasing corruption and eliminating middlemen.
The scheme has proven a huge success, with over 250,000 CSCs across India offering G2C and B2C services to their constituents. Furthermore, women have found employment through this initiative while digital literacy has increased among rural populations. While this initiative has made significant strides forward for India’s development goals, challenges still lie ahead – including improving service quality and security as well as additional VLE training sessions.
Access to Services
The Citizen Service Center Scheme, commonly referred to as Jan Seva Kendra Scheme, offers various government services directly to citizens, such as G2C communication, e-services and financial inclusion services. The goal of the CSC Scheme is to cut out middlemen and make accessing services simpler for citizens.
Government-backed scheme launched in 2006 has since spread throughout the entire nation. VLEs receive a commission payment for every service they provide to customers while being provided training and support from both the CSC operator and government.
CSC scheme brings many advantages to Indian citizens. It provides high quality, cost-effective services that are easily accessible to rural and remote communities as well as employment opportunities and profitable ventures for village entrepreneurs. Furthermore, its centralized technological platform ensures service delivery in an accountable, transparent, efficient manner as well as increasing sustainability by giving Village Learning Entrepreneurs (VLEs) the highest commission per service provided.
Access to Finance
The Community Supported Crop (CSC) scheme offers employment to women village entrepreneurs while also creating lucrative business opportunities for rural India’s inhabitants. Furthermore, it has established itself as more than a service delivery point, but has promoted community capacity building and entrepreneurialism through bottom-up approaches. Furthermore, women-run CSCs created through this programme are helping transform people living in rural India; yet to be evaluated is their impact on individual capabilities or conversion factors of Village Entrepreneurs (VLEs).
The scheme also seeks to offer direct government services directly to citizens by cutting out the middleman, thus improving accountability and decreasing corruption opportunities. Studies have demonstrated that when rates for government services are made public it leads to improved customer relations and transparency resulting in an increase in transaction accounts in countries that have implemented such schemes.
Access to Education
Education can transform lives. Educated people tend to earn more, enjoy better health, and are less likely to live in poverty. Education also promotes long-term economic growth and innovation while contributing to social cohesion and providing skills necessary for work – yet many children suffered during the global pandemic due to school closures; poor families often lack resources needed for remote learning opportunities.
The Community Service Centres (CSC) Scheme connects rural citizens to government services via digital kiosks. CSCs serve as an entryway into G2C and B2C services such as Aadhar card registration, PAN registration, passport applications, FASTag tags and e-District among many others.
The scheme comprises three key components: Village Level Entrepreneurs (VLEs), who run kiosks in villages; a Service Centre Agency responsible for overseeing divisions of CSCs; and a State Designated Agency who are charged with overseeing its implementation across an entire State. VLEs are assisted by local language help desks while CSC e-Governance Services India Limited monitors the whole system.
Access to Health Care
Access to health care has become a central focus in global healthcare systems, prompting numerous frameworks to identify determinants at individual, community and population levels; yet no clear understanding exists regarding its definition or measurement.
Numerous individuals lack access to adequate healthcare, which affects not only poorer nations like the US but also more wealthy ones like Canada and Europe. This lack of healthcare access is often caused by high costs which make medical treatment unaffordable to many patients – often known as care access barriers due to out-of-pocket patient costs being an insurmountable barrier leading them to delay receiving necessary treatment or forgoing it altogether.
The Community Service Centres (CSC) scheme, initiated under the e-governance plan in 2006, seeks to facilitate access to government services by creating front end delivery points in villages across India. VLEs manage these service centres which are overseen by State Designated Agencies.
Access to Information Technology
In developing nations, access and affordability of information technology are central elements to successful e-government applications; yet many rural and economically less capable citizens cannot own or access these technologies.
India has created csc mahaonline as an answer to this problem, which consists of internet kiosks managed by village level entrepreneurs (VLEs) offering various government citizen services through web technology. The Common Service Centre scheme thus creates access to web-enabled government citizen services through local internet kiosks managed by VLEs providing both G2C and B2C services.
CSC programs create employment and business opportunities for VLEs; however, little is known about their impact on digital literacy and citizen access to government welfare programs. To explore this further, this research seeks to assess CSC impact using interpretive structural modelling and fizzy MICMAC.
Access to Justice
The government is taking measures to provide justice to its citizens through various programs such as Tele-Law, Pro Bono Legal Services and Legal Literacy and Awareness programs. They utilize Common Service Centres to expand both qualitatively and quantitatively their reach.
These centers are run by Village Level Entrepreneurs who make money filling out various government forms and e-services, while also providing financial inclusion services, insurance policies, banking accounts and various B2C services to rural communities.
VLEs would be trained in legal literacy and social justice laws such as basic human rights, citizen’s rights vis-a-vis policing, labour laws and women’s rights. VLEs could connect those requiring more extensive legal help with pro bono lawyers or civil legal aid offices if needed. They could also link with non-government organisations (NGOs), hospitals, Law School clinics and district legal services authorities. Document assembly applications could be automated across access-to-justice entities using “smart tags” so information could be reused without needing reentry of data entry reentry of information from different access-to-justice entities allowing reuse without needing to reenter data entry again.
