CSCs scheme in West Bengal
August 05, 2007, I4d Online
This is an interview with the Joint Secretary of West Bengal State Rural Development Agency. He talks about challenges and implementation plans, while highlighting that the village panchayat is in charge of implementing the Common Service Centres (CSC) scheme in the state and not the IT department. This is significant, since implementation of e-governance projects by the IT department is seen to be the primary reason of failure of these projects. West Bengal is the first state in the country to actually begin the roll out of the CSC scheme. He talks about the various services which would be provided through these centres, and the assistance that the government would provide to the CSC operators. However what is disappointing is that, other than the West Bengal initiative, the entire CSC scheme romanticises private sector participation. In many instances, it has been clearly demonstrated that private sector running telecentres will only promote their products and push e-governance services to the fringes, something which calls for public investment rather than private initiative.