When seventy-year-old Ganpat Khomne and his wife, Khasubai recently visited the Common Service Centre in their village, Malegaon Budruk near Baramati, to get their digital pictures clicked, they walked out with not just their pictures, but a whole lot of information about e-governance and other IT enabled services. These services have already become an integral part of the lives of over 60,000 villagers from more than five villages around Baramati in Maharashtra.

“A recent nation-wide survey across Indian households conducted by a leading research agency suggested that Indians wanted government services to be made available like retail services — conveniently and in their neighbourhood,” says Ninad Vengurlekar, head content and services, IL & FS, that has undertaken a study for the rollout and implementation of the Common Services Centre Scheme (CSCS) across India. It is exactly this thought that has gone into the making of the Baramati pilot projects of the Common Service Centres (CSC) implemented by the Department of Information Technology.

The Baramati pilot project, which was inaugurated in November last year, has been well-received by the villagers. There are similar projects in neighbouring villages like Supa, Morgaon and Korhale. “Though I have completed my diploma in computers from Pune, I would prefer to stay and look after this kiosk. This national project that will have 1,00,000 such kiosks in India will help retain the rural youth in villages to an extent. Here, we have undertaken activities like digitisation of birth and death certificates and land documents. We have a ticker that displays NCDEX values in Marathi for the convenience of the farmers visiting it,” says Prakash Gade, village level entrepreneur at the Katewadi kiosk. The other facilities that villagers can access here include Gram Panchayat forms, bus passes, emails, railway and airline tickets, matrimonial uploads on websites and other convenience oriented services.

... contd.